


profound asymmetry (a lesson in astrophysics)

by yogurtgun



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Crowley Was Raphael Before Falling (Good Omens), Getting Together, Historical, Historical References, M/M, Self Induced Amnesia, Trauma, Various countries through various time periods, With A Twist, because I am a nerd like that, legitimate astrophysics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:35:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22297171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yogurtgun/pseuds/yogurtgun
Summary: When the archangel Raphael fell he was split into two beings: Aziraphale and Crowley. Recognizing his lost part, Crowley engages in conversation with Aziraphale. However, Aziraphale doesn't remember ever being Raphael, though he is content spending time with Crowley and keeping him company through the centuries as they face fire, prosecution, and their own feelings.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 74





	1. The One

**Author's Note:**

> I want to thank kedreeva for betaing this monster and I want to thank my fabulous artist Absolugia whose art you can check out in the bottom of the work. Written for Good Omens Big Bang 2019.

_“Alpha Centauri A and B are Sun-like stars, and together they form the binary star Alpha Centauri AB. To the naked eye, the two main components appear to be a single star with an apparent magnitude of −0.27, forming the brightest star in the southern constellation of Centaurus and the third-brightest in the night sky, outshone only by Sirius and Canopus.”_

### -

To understand angelic existence we must return to the time before Armageddon-that-wasn’t, backtrack six thousand years, six days, and stop at the first hour. For the many failings of human memory, the first verse has always been correct. In the beginning, God _did_ create the heavens and the earth.

Of course, nobody has ever said that the heavens were particularly populated. The full heavenly host will be completed only on the seventh day, along with the rest of the world. Furthermore, the unit of time -- _day_ \-- isn’t entirely correct either. The creation takes however long it takes; there are no clocks yet and one cannot say if it is a second or a millennia that passes. After all, a human concept of a day, 24 hours, has to necessitate the creation of angels, the rebellion of half and their subsequent fall, furthered by the creation of Hell. That is why the first seven days are measured by deeds and time only starts to tick when humans are put on earth. However, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

The next sentence, by all measures, instead of explaining the creation should have been: “And to do the Almighty’s bidding, there were only four.”

Every one plucked from a different thought, it cannot not be said they bear a uniform appearance. They are large enough to stretch from the heavens to the earth, they are clusters of stars and planets, pale shimmering nebulae, shades of purple, green, fuchsia, and supernovae already going off.

Earth’s cosmic address is already difficult to conceptualize. To imagine the size of the first angels would mean to exit the Sun’s solar system, find the back door to the Milky Way, say hi to Andromeda who will be coming over for a chat _shortly_ , and settle oneself in the Local Group in the Supercluster which consists of hundreds of thousands of galaxies which all bear billions of suns and uncountable planets.

With such a shapeless form, creating the heavens is not difficult. All one needs to do is cut from oneself, carve away the pieces, and it comes to be. The only thing that remains unchanged, even as they shrink, are their wings. Grace can never be removed.

However, saying wings bears bird-like association. Wings are power, grace, potential for miracles. They are energy. And they only take form later.

Michael has been fascinated with making galaxies filled with white dwarves. On the other spectrum, Uriel is enchanted with red giants, who are still the closest to immortality. Gabriel sticks to pulsars. Raphael, on the other hand, is far more satisfied with making some balanced stars that won’t go off like firecrackers the moment they’re created.

Looking at forever exploding nebulae is all nice and good, if a little bit difficult on the eyes of those who will be looking up at them -- humans -- and angels do not care much for their opinion. After all, an exploding hypernova doesn’t care how it affects the surrounding stars and planets. It just happens. It’s inevitable.

Angels learned to alter their celestial form much too late, when coming down to Earth for most is an unwanted chore and thus pawned off to the Celestial Envoy, their agent. His name is Aziraphale.

### -

There is something integrally human in the appreciation of symmetry and repeating geometric patterns. Mathematics liberate humans of their senses and allow them to probe the universe only with their intellect, but when those same mathematics are applied to the creation of beauty, they become codes of the universe written in the universal language of emotion provoked by art.

One does not need to speak the language of the makers to understand Hagia Sophia, the Alhambra, or Sanchi Stupa.

But the universe cannot exist with such symmetry. That is grasped by a very small man with a big mind who writes a simple equation: E= mc². Energy can become matter and matter, in turn, can once again go back to energy. But the only way that energy can have become matter, in the beginning, is in pairs: matter and antimatter.

Every subatomic particle has its antiparticle partner: electrons and positrons, protons and antiprotons, neutrons and antineutrons. It is not the difference of one being charged positive and the other negative. It is the inherent difference in the very firmament. Neutrons have zero net charge, but they’re made out of quarks that have fractional charges that cancel each other out. They may look the same, but they are not.

For simplicity’s sake let’s refer to this energy as photons because they carry energy. A photon turns into matter, it makes a matter/antimatter pair. Matter and antimatter come together, they make a photon. There is the symmetry. But if it were just so, there would be no matter in the universe, only light. Just as it had been, on the first day.

Here’s the trick: an egg can’t hatch without heat. As the universe cools, there is no more energy for photons to make their matter/antimatter pairs. Their number is limited.

Based on previous observations, we can conclude that these pairs will find each other, produce energy, and that will be all that is left of the universe. And that would be so, if not for a break in the symmetry.

Now, imagine you’re eighteen years old, you’re at prom, squeezed into spandex, more hairspray on your head that is perfectly safe in the vicinity of open flame, that traditional blue eyeshadow caking your eyelids. The dance hall is filled with 999,999 dancing pairs, and you’re the only particle standing by the punch bowl and looking at the clock. There’s something inherently wrong about not wearing pants, and you’re thinking about cutting your hair off and painting it green.

This happens when a photon only makes a matter particle. And that particle is in every star, planet, and being -- the very progenitor. It is all that ever was, ever is, or ever will be.

### -

The rain, after the first few days, became tedious and boring. Aziraphale would have preferred to spend it anywhere else, where he could observe everything from a dryer position.

Unfortunately, his orders were to stay with Noah until the flood passed. It meant going through the mortifying ordeal of actually revealing himself to be an angel, that yes he was sent by the Almighty, and that yes, he would be so kind to answer any questions they had.

No amount of liking humanity could prepare him for close quarters with eight extremely religious people. It was, in fact, so intimidating, Aziraphale took to wandering about in the cargo hold. The animals, at least, recognized his fretful spirit and tended not to ask awkward questions.

The sight of all the animals mingling and behaving, as if they knew what kind of trouble they were in, was intrinsically Eden-esque. Even if it did smell of manure. He passed the giraffes, elephants, the goats, and spiralled, lower and lower, passing all manner of creatures, taking time to note, watch, and poke each until he was bored. Perhaps he should have noticed the chattering, but in his defence he was surrounded by a cacophony of animal sounds. Chattering, even the hissing kind, was not unusual.

The first strange thing Aziraphale did notice was that the unicorn wasn’t resting, like most other animals, but that she was standing and looking somewhat put out, eyeing Aziraphale as if contemplating running him through with her horn. Her hold was on the lowest level¹, which might have influenced her disdainful disposition. (¹Noah hadn’t the heart to leave the unicorn but it meant giving her larger stable to another pair.)

The unicorn huffed and thumped the ground, annoyed with Aziraphale. Chattering, which up until that point Aziraphale thought normal, stopped.

_It’s always the absence you notice_ , Aziraphale thought. Against better judgement, he opened the unicorn’s hold and slipped inside. It truly was a miracle that he wasn’t ran through then, and not one of his own making.

On the far right wall of the stable he saw a door. He was fairly sure that a door wasn’t supposed to be there and he circled around the unicorn to get to it. Now that he found himself standing in front of it, Aziraphale got the feeling he wasn’t supposed to open it. The door exuded the feeling of unease, of inherent creepiness, and promised it held back nightmares on the other end. If there ever was an ominous door then this was it. But curiosity had always been his downfall, and even in this form, he could not resist. He grabbed the handle and pulled the door open.

The first thing, in the darkness, Aziraphale saw were glowing golden eyes with slits. Crowley. Aziraphale sighed. That in itself wasn’t so bad. He would be pushed to admit that he’d been worried when the demon had disappeared, but his presence carried a simple thought -- Aziraphale wouldn’t be alone. After all, Aziraphale reasoned, everyone else was paired off and Heaven didn’t exactly give news if the rain was holy and blessed -- both things it turned out to be -- which might have swept Crowley off the earth like the rest of Mesopotamia.

His relief was short lived. It took him a moment, but then he saw the others. Numerous and frequentative, dark eyes peered at him with caution. It looked as if Crowley had somehow acquired an angelic form and all of its eyes were at once pointed at him.

Aziraphale froze like one might when walking in on someone naked until he realized the eyes belonged to heads, that belonged to bodies, that were strictly human, small, and definitely not supposed to be there.

Crowley was sitting with children. In fact, he had one in his lap and a babe swaddled in his arms. Another blink and Aziraphale noticed how messy Crowley’s hair was, how distressed he looked, and the way his irises were slowly going round, as if preparing for attack.

It was the year three thousand and four. They had already known each other for a thousand of those.

The feeling blooming in Aziraphale’s chest had no explanation for it. Aziraphale wouldn’t have an explanation for another thousand. But it was there, and it was telling him: ‘ _Look, how familiar. You could have remembered to do this yourself. Weren’t you supposed to protect them? He did it for you. And really, aren’t you daft for not even trying?’_ and it was also saying, _‘For the love of the Almighty, where have you seen him before?’_

Combatting those thoughts and with the picture in front of him, the only thing Aziraphale could do was flee. So he closed the doors, shut the stable doors, and went up.

### -

The Almighty was quite clear on who was supposed to survive the flood and who wasn’t. Aziraphale, feeling quite guilty about letting the others drown, but also guilty about letting Crowley go unattended -- after all, what if his intervention caused the ark to go down? -- returned to the hold. This time he brought bread and wine, it was Babylonian, and this time he knocked.

“Couldn’t have brought milk?” Crowley asked dryly once he opened the doors and let Aziraphale in. He still had the babe in his arms. He looked marginally more put together and not anywhere nearly as violent.

Aziraphale sighed, giving one of the children the bread. They will find that the whole loaf, quite miraculously, could feed all of them.

“What are you doing Crowley? You know we can’t go against the Great Plan,” Aziraphale said in what, he thought, was quite a reasonable tone of voice.

Crowley made a noise, shrugged, and waved his hand. “Not going _against_ it really. The doors were open. The way I see it, anyone could have walked in really. That was the whole _point_. Just because I’m a demon doesn’t mean I couldn’t take a few with me, now is it?”

“That’s _preposterous_ ,” Aziraphale said.

“So is killing kids,” Crowley hissed. “Or you think that’s alright, hmm? Being angel and all? What are you now anyway, Guardian of the Ark?”

“I am a Principality, thank you very much. And it’s not on me to _think_ , it’s only to do.”

It was supposed to be a winning argument, but after he said it he only felt somehow morbidly discouraged.

Crowley looked at him with his even, unblinking stare, and there was something in his eyes that he shouldn’t have been able to recognize. It was disappointment.

“Well,” Crowley said, in a reasonable voice which was all the worse. “If the upstairs find out, and they tell you want to do, give us at least a starting chance.”

_A thousand years_ , Aziraphale thought. They saw each other a handful of times. Everything was still quite new. And still, Aziraphale found himself thinking, _“It’s you. It’s you isn’t it?”_ and did not know what that meant.

### -

Re-reading books was one of Aziraphale’s favorite pastimes, especially after a long time had passed. Time warped perspective and experience flavored the re-tasting. Some books he could never remember if he read them or not until half way through when he decided he did not, but ultimately remembered he did after all, when he saw the familiar conclusion. The feeling of seeing Crowley with children was just like that.

### -

It would be another three thousand years until the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley reached their Arrangement. However, being named did not indicate the time of its nascency.

The Arrangement in fact began, unofficially, a thousand years before a certain carpenter from Galilee and Son of God were to be crucified on Golgotha and around the time when Sodom was the town to be in.

If there ever was a more accurate description, it would be: “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” in all senses but one: actual demons would be found everywhere _but_ Sodom. The seeds of sin could only be spread where there was none beforehand, and Sodom was not infertile grounds as much as it was exhausted soil that couldn’t churn out any more good produce.

When gardens got in such a state, there were a few ways to fix them. Growing wheat and rye used to work for a very long time: after growing the crops, they just needed to be plowed and mixed with the earth to create plant based manure. Another way to avoid ploughing, is to plant clover, or, easiest of all, to leave it alone. All efforts that would take a long time to take effect.

Aziraphale, who was spending more time eating, being drunk, and talking with Crowley rather than completing his duty, was thinking that the Almighty never got around to taking those gardening classes, and it seemed, neither did they have the patience. The heavenly host was coming and they were more keen on salting and burning the earth behind them.

Aziraphale dropped his figs back onto his plate and looked across the table at Crowley who had his eyes closed and fingers pressed to his temples. He was just figuring out the way of de-intoxication and he would have had it then had Aziraphale not stood up, swayed, sat down, and said, “Didn’t you say you had things to do?”

He was getting used to Crowley’s ways, mainly that, even though he always began conversations about work, afterwards he was amenable to a little personal touch if Aziraphale let him get it out of his system.

He listened, and now he remembered: Crowley had a man to talk out of a city, and Aziraphale had Abraham to heal, and that they were swiftly running out of time.

Instead of getting out of each other’s way, as they would later define it, the beginning of the Arrangement had been quite the opposite: they sat in Abraham’s home and enjoyed the meal that, out of politeness, they couldn’t really refuse and, furthermore, really didn’t want to -- their abused vessels were suffering through quite a hangover.

Healing Abraham was really a minor miracle, a snap of fingers, and if Aziraphale were under duress, he couldn’t even admit to who did the miracle in the first place. (Later, of course, he will remember that demons are quite removed from such graces as healing by virtue of the Fall).

Lot hadn’t been anywhere in the realm of amenable. Crowley had asked, bartered, and was about to resort to blackmail, when the stubborn old man had finally listened to reason and gotten the hell out of dodge. Crowley had gone with him only because angels were about to happen to Sodom, like earthquakes and tsunamis and ice ages happened, and he wasn’t going to give them another target beside the humans.

Of course, later, Aziraphale was chastised for eating in Abraham’s home -- it wasn’t kosher -- but he thought, all things considered, it went well.

It was why he didn’t flinch so much as he did a double take when Crowley entered the tavern, went for the bar, then did a double take and slithered over to Aziraphale once he spotted the angel. It was always a relief, however short lived, to see a familiar face in the ever-changing sea; a sentiment unspoken but shared by both.

Aziraphale had been travelling with a young man for two weeks and now in Media, he was just starting to convince the youth about marrying Sarah. He had no idea why Heaven insisted on this marriage, but as with his many other duties, Aziraphale learned that asking questions made Michael’s brow thunderous and Gabriel’s smile brittle. He decided it was better not to test them any further.

In any case, the youth was proving to be an entertaining pastime. However, just like a car indicating the turning sign, the moment Aziraphale sensed Crowley, his attention had been occupied by the demon, who seemed surprised.

“Good evening, Azira--” Crowley started, but when he saw the expression on the angel’s face, quickly went silent and repeated the vowels the angel was mouthing at him.

“Az-a-riah. Azariah. Yes.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale nodded.

Crowley didn’t fold as much as he collapsed into the seat across from him, managing to make angles with each limb. Aziraphale was envious of him for that. Crowley always managed to appear indubitably fresh, stylish, with aristocratic airs around him that spoke of his general lack of care for consequences and his daredevil attitude. He gave others that _je ne sais quoi_ feeling that made them both admire him from a distance but also feel afraid to approach.

It would take Aziraphale a couple of hundred years to understand there was more behind that, but he would never really not think of Crowley as _cool_.

“What brings you to _Media_ of all places?” Crowley asked, eyebrows pinched together.

Azirpahale glanced at the young man next to himself. Crowley always picked up his hints.

“Allow me to introduce you. This is Tobias, my travelling companion and _kinsman_. Soon to be married, in fact.”

Crowley’s eyebrows lifted as he said, “Oh, married? Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Tobias said and looked back at Aziraphale.

“Would you be so kind to get us all drinks Tobias?” Aziraphale asked, unknowingly giving the young man the perfect excuse to slip away from what was building to be an awkward situation.

Coins in hand, Tobias went, and took his time.

“Didn’t think you were now officiating,” Crowley said, looking pleased with his smart remark.

Aziraphale gave the demon a look, then said, “We’re having a bit of a problem with demonic intervention. Asmodeus.”

“Oh,” Crowley’s shoulders sagged. “That _fiend_. Ever since he un-earthed here in Media I have to walk on eggshells. Sarah’s just about had it.”

“You know the poor girl?” Aziraphale asked, sympathetic.

“More importantly, he steals _all_ the good liquor, and all the _fun_.”

Aziraphale saw opportunity in that, so he licked his lips and said, “Care to lend a hand?”

Crowley inclined his head so his yellow eyes shone in the firelight, glinting like stones at the bottom of a riverbed. They narrowed.

“A demon could get into a lot of trouble, helping an angel.”

“Fine,” Aziraphale said. “Then what did you need from me, dear fellow? Or are you going to tell me this business with Asmodeus _wasn’t_ why you...approached?”

Crowley colored, opened and closed his mouth, made a sound, then huffed defeated and leaned back into his chair. “Fine. _Fine._ But no _smiting_ him or anything. Hell would have a fit if one of the princes got dusted.”

Aziraphale thought for a moment, and considered that exiling a demon wouldn’t look so bad on the books. Smiting got a smidge more difficult after he gave away his sword, after all.

He sighed. “Oh, very well.”

Tobias, who couldn’t linger any longer by the bar, returned with the three wines and an apologetic look pointed at Aziraphale.

“Crowley might have a solution for our demon-shaped problem,” Aziraphale told him, and Tobias was suddenly not feeling apologetic at all.

Their meetings had to be hidden, but Crowley managed to impart Tobias with the information he needed.

“Don’t forget. Fish liver. He’ll fly out of there like, well, like the devil was chasing him. He’s always hated fish guts.” Crowley told Tobias the night he was to face Asmodeus. He cocked his head. “Strange really, considering he’s an owl². Or owl-ish. Nevermind.”

(²The question of the natural order in hell was this: there was no order to hell and there was nothing natural about it. But if there was, then it would be flipped on its head.)

The plan was this: Tobias was to use fish guts to chase away Asmodeus. So weakened, Azirpahale could go after him and capture him when he tired.

It did take Aziraphale flying at reckless speeds to Egypt, wings out and all, but once there, he was free to bind him. While away, Crowley looked after the newlyweds, which mostly meant toasting to their happiness and steering away from their bed chambers, and when Aziraphale returned all there was left to do was celebrate.

“You know,” Crowley mused into his wine. There was always a lot of wine. “Asmodeus is a--- was a---” he looked at Aziraphale, “is a prince. Of demons. You know how we are downstairs: there’s the Dukes. The Princes. The Council.”

“The report mentioned,” Azirpahale allowed.

“It’s just that-- it’s just. Well. If I were downstairs I wouldn’t be-- Not the point. The point--”

“Yes, dear fellow, what is the point?”

“The point I’m trying to make is that. Well. He’s a prince. And you bound him. Or exorcised him. Whatever.”

Aziraphale blinked. He hadn’t really thought about that.

“I did.” he ventured on, unsteadily.

With a noise of frustration, Crowley waved his hand offering his palm, and making a frustrated noise that could only ever mean, _How_?

“I’m an angel, Crawly. I never imagined I couldn’t. That’s ineffability for you.”

Crowley did not look convinced but he did not push either.

### -

Aziraphale spotted him in the crowd. If it weren’t for his eyes, his flaming red hair, or even his presence that Aziraphale could feel pulsing in his mind, it would have been the laurel on his head. Only few in Athens wore laurel wreaths, and even fewer of those were sitting in the theater, amongst the rest of fourteen thousand of Athenians, waiting to judge the plays.

As if he could feel Aziraphale’s eyes on him, Crowley blinked, turned left, right, and then their eyes met. For a moment, they held. Aziraphale smiled.

Crowley blinked and turned away. Aziraphale felt his smile turning into something else, especially when a couple of people decided to block his vision of Crowley. But Aziraphale tasted a miracle in the air and when he looked to his left the seat was empty of the human previously there, and re-filled by Crowley himself.

A smirk unrolled on his face and he said, “Hello, angel.”

Aziraphale’s heart hammered.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale acknowledged. “Fan of the dramatics I see?”

“I heard this Aeschylus guy was good. He’s up next. You doing your civic duty?”

“I, ah, quite enjoy theater actually.”

Crowley seemed to be amused.

“Well,” he said in a hushed whisper as the play started, “It’s the human imagination isn’t it? Nothing quite like it above _or_ below.”

He fell silent as the play started.

Later, Aziraphale would need to be pushed to remember what the play was about. He caught words, sentences, the music. He was there but his attention stayed on Crowley who was, from time to time, smiling, or frowning, and in one instance mouthing the words, as if he knew the play already or read it somewhere--

“I’ll take care of you. It’s wicked work. Not to me, not if it’s you.”

Then his golden eyes slithered sideways to Aziraphale and laid such fondness and carefulness upon his face that Aziraphale felt his mortal heart threatening to beat out of his chest. In that moment, when the music struck and swelled, the flute players and voices mingled and created a symphony such of heaven, Aziraphale realised that he’d known Crowley before, and that he was familiar for another reason entirely.

### -

Isn’t it always like that? You know something to be true about yourself for years, then one day comes another to prove you wrong.

In a world where everyone had one hand, they wouldn’t think of themselves as having _only_ one hand. They would be normal. Absence came only in the face of facts which prove previous knowledge wrong.

Aziraphale wondered if Goliath thought Adam was strange for having two eyes or whether he was envious of that aberration.

### -

The brittle papyrus bore testimony to times passed. Oresteia remained the same, if in a good need of copying down, and better contemporary translation. Aziraphale dipped his quill and continued re-tracing the pattern on a new scroll.

He never got to choose where he was sent but Alexandria had proven to be a blessing. The library was astonishing: with thousands of scrolls, tablets and books kept all in their original forms, copies made for consumption, and knowledge hidden in its vaults. Aziraphale, who had been made to safeguard knowledge, had felt right at home.

Rather than biding time between his assignments, most of which now revolved around insistent conversations with an already smart ruler, he felt as if it was more the opposite: he bided time with her before returning to the library.

A shadow fell over him and when he looked up he could see familiar golden eyes. Quill threatening to drip, he quickly replaced it, and let the ink dry.

“Crawly,” Aziraphale said, delighted too much at once, and unable to control his tone of voice. It was so rare that thoughts brought those who were the center of them forth, and in the air was nothing but the scent of the sea. Some miracles only humanity could necessitate.

“When did you get here?”

“Recently,” Crowley said. “Felt you here. Thought I should pop up, give you a formal hello. What is it that you’re doing?”

He was shifting around, drawing to him the old Oresteia scroll. Aziraphale winced, suddenly very concerned for his first editions, but did not stop him.

“Careful with it, please,” Aziraphale said, concerned.

Crowley gave him an amused look. “Of course. Where did you stop?”

“Cassandra’s just telling Agamemnon they’re going to die,” Aziraphale explained.

Crowley hummed. “She really would have been better off don’t you think?”

“The way I see it, Cassandra, Clytemnestra and Iphigenia would have been better off.”

Crowley tapped the wooden table with one sharpened nail. “Are you too-- better off?” Crowley’s voice is soft, careful, eyes pointedly looking down at the text.

“Alexandria has been treating me well,” Aziraphale answered but felt that he wasn’t answering the question properly.

Whatever Crowley meant with his question seemed to disappear with Aziraphale’s answer. The demon huffed a laugh, shook his head, and stood up.

“I’ll see you around, angel,” Crowley said and left as suddenly as he’d come.

“Hopefully not,” Aziraphale replied, in that sort of way he supposed angels were meant to talk to demons, but he did not sound very eager or convincing when going about it.

Ominously, he was right. He didn’t see Crowley until the city was burning, Caesar’s forces were pushing forwards, and blood was soaking the ground.

“Come,” Crowley said and he’d tugged Aziraphale away from the steps of the library. The fire, just like the soldiers, didn’t take notice of them. It was commanded by another, and her red hair was lost in the sanguine of Roman coats.

From the top of the hill, they watched pillars of smoke rising up to the heavens, listened to the screaming and shouting, and imagined laughter, lost in the noise of war. Somewhere in that chaos was the one responsible.

“Alright there, angel?” Crowley asked in his own awkward way.

Aziraphale couldn’t tear his eyes away from the city. The fire burned all the brighter during night.

He saw too much war already. It was his first memory of heaven, and then he’d already been holding a flaming sword to cut and pierce those who had opposed Her rule. All angels were soldiers. Aziraphale had been a good one at that. After all, there he was, opening his eyes for the first time, and already he was thrust into a situation where he could fulfill his purpose.

There was nothing quite like the sight of ten million angels raising ten million flaming swords. Only that flame could destroy an angel. After all, demons didn’t exist quite yet and in Eden demons weren’t the ones who they were supposed to protect the first humans from. It was from the traitors to the cause.

Aziraphale had fought on the side of heaven and he still felt it had taken something away from him. Something he could never have back.

“You came to the city for this, didn’t you?” Aziraphale intoned and even to his own ears the words were sharp and cold.

He could feel his essence slowly churning. Protecting the library wasn’t an official assignment. He’d finished up what he was sent here to do. But within him, his grace burned, and he felt it spreading through him, fracture-lines spreading through his vessel.

The issue of angels, and those of angelic stock living on Earth was this: their essences were never meant to be contained in something tangible.

Cracks began to deepen and turn into finger length creases, as if someone decided to draw hem lines all over his skin.

“Not for war!” Crowley crowed, offended.

_Good_ , Aziraphale thought but did not know why he thought it. After all Crowley was a demon, he _should_ have been there for war and by now he knew Crowley was whip-smart and capable of causing one with nothing more than an ill-placed word.

Aziraphale gave away his sword for a few reasons, most of which were that it itched in his hands like money itched in the palm of an avid gambler.

Sadness, Aziraphale decided. That was what he was feeling. He hadn’t thought humans could ever make him feel such a thing.

The lines disappeared, the fracture lines receding. He felt his core cooling. Aziraphale was now nothing more than a white dwarf: a skeleton of a star that was calm, unchanging, destined to dimly burn until the end of the universe.

“I’m sorry about the books,” Crowley said.

Finally, Aziraphale turned to him. “Thank you,” he said. It was polite. What else to say?

Crowley’s expression did something.

“It’s not the end of knowledge,” Aziraphale added, now trying to reassure both himself and Crowley. “It’s just that. Well--”

“What, angel?”

“I was supposed to be guarding it. In a way.” Aziraphale was a Principality. Guarding was what he did best. It’s what he was created for. He failed.

“When the fires burn down, we can salvage what we can,” Crowley offered. “And what you can’t salvage, you can write down.”

Aziraphale nodded, though Crowley’s optimism was difficult to feel. It wasn’t the end of knowledge. After all, great empires much older than Alexandria existed. China had been writing for years, scholars passed through Alexandria, taking copies, translating them into Arabic, spiriting them away to other places where they might be read and examined. Humans always hoarded knowledge. He was sure that a little Alexandria existed somewhere on Earth, out of sight.

When morning came and the fires burned down, Crowley went down to the ruined library and spent the rest of the day with him in soot, searching for scrolls and tablets. It was the longest they’d spent together at a time.

But the nature of their employment had not changed. Crowley was still an agent, and he was told to leave.

“You know what they say. All roads lead to Rome.”

It was a fine goodbye.

### -

Later, after Aziraphale took on a nice house and invested his energies in bookkeeping, he would remember that it was the Serpent who gifted Eve free will, who made her question, who made her want to learn. The first teacher. In a sense, that made Crawley himself the act of reading. The act of learning. The act of seeking more than what was served on a platter.

And so it made Aziraphale question what it meant that he held that knowledge in such a high esteem that he felt he should guard it so ardently. He’d been on apple duty, after all.

His musings were interrupted by the runners. It was the year 44 before Jesus was to be born, and the Dictator was dead.

### -

The calendars weren’t destined to change until the 16th century when Gregory realised the possibility of Easter falling on Shabbat. Yet, even Aziraphale felt the shift in the air, the end of an era.

_It’s the end_ , he thought, _of many things._

He could no longer look at Crowley and see his brilliant golden eyes. They were shadowed from view, as if looking through darkened glass could help him distance himself from humanity.

For all of his failings, Aziraphale was an angel, but it wasn’t his ethereal nature that told him Crowley wasn’t doing well.

For one, his hair was gone. This wasn’t a change in style, not after Crowley boasted about it not fifty years earlier. It had been lovely and long, but Crowley had cut it and sat a laurel on his head. Where it had been fashionable in Athens, the only reason to wear it now Aziraphale could find was that Crowley made himself a senator. After all, Caligula fancied himself a soldier. Military chic was in.

For a moment, Aziraphale thought he was wearing a palla, which seemed quite a Crowley thing to do, until he got closer and noticed that it wasn’t a palla, it was a chlamys, some five centuries out of style. He wasn’t even wearing it properly.

Crowley, as far as Aziraphale knew, had always followed humanity closer than him. But he looked out of style, out of time, and out of care to give these things.

“Still a demon then?”

“What kind of a stupid question is that?”

He expected Crowley to reply with one of his usual dismissals, to say something smart, brush it off, make a joke, but today, for some reason Aziraphale wasn’t privileged to knowing, the comment hurt him.

Crowley turned away. Being brushed off wasn’t unfamiliar to Aziraphale. Heaven had no patience for dilly-dallying, and it had no patience for his more contemplative moods. The holy texts never went far into angelology; if they ever did, humans would be faced with a fact: angels weren’t kind. They were professional. Angels were simply rows of weapons ready for use, cocked guns that only needed the word from above to be fired.

Aziraphale should have let Crowley be. He was obviously not interested in talking business with him, and Aziraphale knew he probably wouldn’t be amenable to socializing. But Aziraphale could not help but remember all the times Crowley was inexplicably kind, if only because he was treading the same waters of time with him, and Crowley looked miserable. Aziraphale could not leave his side any more than he wanted to.

“In Rome long?”

Aziraphale expected not to be answered, he expected Crowley perhaps to stand up, leave, to ignore him when so miffed.

Instead, Crowley said, “Just nipped in for a quick temptation. You?” Even if it was like pulling teeth, it was still something.

“I thought I’d try Petronius’ new restaurant. I hear he does remarkable things to oysters.”

The invitation, Aziraphale hoped, was implied.

“I’ve never eaten an oyster.”

Aziraphale, shocked, well-near horrified, said, “Let me tempt you-- oh no, that’s your job.”

Crowley’s smile was amused, and that told Aziraphale he was softening.

“Come have lunch with me, Crowley.”

“I think I _will_ let myself be _tempted_ \--”

“Now, my dear fellow--”

Crowley chuckled and that really was the end of that conversation.

They went to Petronius’ and they got lunch, though not before stopping for Crowley to alter his appearance to blend in better. Now there was a regular toga, a snake pin on his right shoulder, and the laurel was gone.

“The one people fine with snakes, and they turn out like this,” Crowley grumbled.

“They associate them with the local god of healing. Though I don’t think Asclepious would have appreciated the name change,” Aziraphale replied conversationally. It was known, after all, that if Romans did anything well, it was trying to align their gods with the gods of imported cultures.

Crowley made a disgusted sound, and asked, “What is it now?”

“Vediovis,” Aziraphale replied. “Interesting story about him, at least.”

“Wasn’t he the protector of falsely prosecuted?” Crowley said, bitterness on his tongue. He still remembered Golgotha clearly. It was different, after all, knowing what humans did to each other, and seeing a friend suffering. “Should have stuck with Hermes if they wanted a snake motif, don’t you think?”

Somewhere between the oysters, the drink, and the murmur of regular people around them, they were finally able to leave the strange tension behind and rather than an angel and a demon, be instead two co-workers in a steadily warming acquaintanceship.

Aziraphale tottered on about the origins of Hermes and how he was really once a part of another god who was similar to a vedic deity _Pushan_. The god was worshiped in the capacity of Pan Hermes and, when they saw the use for it, the human decided to split the deity in two creating Pan and Hermes. But Crowley, who had already known all of that, instead thought of what was coming.

“Things are going to sour,” Crowley said in the end, after Aziraphale was finished. “With Caligula I mean.”

It wasn’t always easy to understand how Crowley felt, but after such a long time Aziraphale noticed that their thoughts often liked to wander the same alleys so he did not take affront to the shift in dialogue. The only difference was in the conclusion they drew.

“It won’t last,” Aziraphale tried for reassurance and only got to lazy optimism.

“Nothing does, angel. Doesn’t make it less horrible now. Won’t make it less horrible _later_.”

Aziraphale felt as if they were no longer talking about Rome. If he had the ability to read minds he would have been able to understand the itchiness between Crowley’s shoulder blades, and the need within him to take Aziraphale’s hand. However, then he would have also known he only ever needed to ask for something.

Blind to both but set in his ways, he said, “Either way. Shouldn’t be long now, until the next. It is time we both got out of dodge. Coincidence really, that we met at all.”

“Out of dodge?” Crowley said, sounding offended beyond belief. He looked up, then slumped into his seat.

“How many will die while we get out of dodge?”

“That isn’t our responsibility, Crowley.”

“Isn’t it though?” he hummed, as if to himself. “We’re the only ones-- the only ones who know. Who can do something.”

Aziraphale sighed. ”It’s the great plan. We can no more change what’s written than move mountains.”

Properly sloshed, Crowley looked at Aziraphale over his glasses. His eyes were mellow, sad and glossy. “We could, once.”

Aziraphale sighed. “Yes well, before reality got so...firm, I mean.”

“No, not then, not-- I mean. Before.”

“I don’t follow,” Aziraphale said.

A heartbreaking sight: Crowley forcing a smile, pushing his glasses back onto his nose. “You never did.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Oh I don’t know. It would be nice going further east.”

### -

Later, standing at the foot of the temple between the two peaks of the Capitoline Hill in Rome where Vediovis’ statue stood, beardless, with a bundle of arrows grasped in his right hand, Aziraphale would feel a shiver go down his back.

He would feel his palms sweating and he would find himself in heaven, between flashes of light, and he would remember being blind, and grasping for something that was no longer there.

### -

All great cities bow to fire. This time, Aziraphale did not stay to see the ruins of Rome after the fire spread. There was already too much pain sowed in the soil; Nero, no matter how he rushed to get back to the city, would never again earn the hearts of his citizens.

Aziraphale would consider it a personal failure, if he did not believe that some things were just meant to be.

Thebes was a better choice as province. Away from the politics, away from the buddings of civil war, doused in the Greek ocean, one could settle into a semblance of life with ease, like slipping on new shoes.

Crowley had not come with him, but he got to Thebes four years later all the same, carrying bitter-sweet news. Death of an Emperor. There would be another one in a fortnight.

Aziraphale could smell the ash on him even with the eastern winds blowing, carrying the scent of the sea. He had not expected Crowley to find him here.

“Worshipping false idols?” Crowley asked, in his own way always picking fights, but never willing to go through with them.

Aziraphale had not turned yet to see him. He had placed mock-offerings on the tomb. “Just to blend in,” he said. “You know how humans are.”

There was a noise, like a slither, and a shadow fell over him. Aziraphale could feel Crowley’s presence at his back, but where once it would have made him nervous, now he felt all too aware of his hair, his ears, his skin, anywhere Crowley’s breath touched.

“Iolaus? I don’t think we met _that_ one.”

Nervous, Aziraphale turned halfway. His shoulder almost brushed against Crowley, and when he looked up at him, there was no air left in his lungs. Crowley peered down at him, softly amused, slightly bored, and resplendent. His hair flirted with the tops of his shoulders, and Aziraphale felt captured, enamoured, absolutely stuck. He remembered Athens, and he remembered the way his heart beat then.

It was the same feeling, thawing, here under the gaze of other gods who would, surely, turn a blind eye.

“Oh just. A minor deity really,” Aziraphale lied and colored, but for another reason entirely.

Crowley quirked an eyebrow. There was something thick in his voice when he murmured, “Well. Wouldn’t want not to fit.”

Out of a pocket that Aziraphale could have sworn was empty beforehand, he produced a suspiciously similar offering. He laid it down, and they stood there, side by side, not quite touching, the backs of their hands accidentally grazing one another.

“What now?” Crowley asked.

“Wish for something you want,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley considered it. Then he said, “I wish hell would forget me for about a century.”

Aziraphale laughed and silently wished they would meet, next time, under better circumstances. Then wished, in the sort of way only an angel can, that no matter what happened, there would be him and Crowley, and a jug of wine even at the end of the world.

### -

In order for something to exist, it needed its antithesis. Death had, for that reason, been there, a younger sibling born of the Heavens, right after the first four angels finished their jobs.

The Almighty created, but the finality of the creation demanded it be unmade. The decay of cells was a necessary fault in programming.

War had come later, dressed in red and hailed a victor. She should have been there in Heaven, but just like all other four, the Horsemen were always reserved for whence they came from: the minds of men alone.

It was a simple rule: when one commanded armies, those armies demanded a purpose.

But just after War, like twins born minutes apart, came another one. A pale one. She had a quiver full of arrows and she only had to shoot one to spread disease to thousands. She wore a laurel crown because illness was a conquest, and war could never quite catch up in body count no matter how much she tried.

Behind them only trotted Famine, carrying scales, just like the ones Aziraphale remembered giving Joseph. The speed never mattered to Famine, after all, it only ever needed three weeks.

-

Aziraphale thought much of crowns, especially during King Arthur’s time. He thought he remembered a silvery one but he couldn’t be sure. He never knew on which head it sat.

If Aziraphale ever caught himself, he would have had to consider the thought that Principalities had only one head, that it was not him who suffered from curiosity, and that before a sword he used to have a quiver. But people are the blindest when it comes to themselves.

### -

Cairo was an epicenter. Like Rome, Alexandria, Thebes, it drew people of knowledge towards it, a beacon of hope and enlightenment in unknown times. Aziraphale never thought he’d find another great city in the 11th century, never even considered he’d be let out of Britain until the next wars took over.

Then khalifs had sent emissaries around the world, and it had been Aziraphale’s duty to usher the Christian and Jewish scholars on the way to the research centers in the Islamic capitals.

Aziraphale had travelled with the caravan for months until they’d reached Cairo.

In the desert, he looked up towards the sky that covered everything in the horizon, and he’d found the incomprehensible, expanding, shifting nebulae from which he’d been a dewdrop that escaped, and was in the process of slowly sizzling out in the hot dry air. Aziraphale felt both eternal and finite in that sort of way only humans could feel impossibly small when dwarfed by Her creation.

In Cairo, Azirpahale found arabic translations of works he’d handled in Alexandria, he found the scientific method as a seed towards humans gaining true knowledge, and he found Crowley, always gazing up.

He could feel him, pulsing in the back of his mind; a headache that departed only when he spotted Crowley secreted on the top of one of the minarets, just before the first morning prayer.

He was looking at the sky with keen interest, and in the darkness Aziraphale could see his snake eyes glowing with pale fluorescence, while his dark robes hid him away, so they appeared like two orbs reaching towards the sky.

“I knew you’d come, sooner or later,” Crowley told him, still looking at the sky. He did not sound like himself but maybe it was the dark.

“They’ve only just started translating medical books, but it’s far more interesting than the Iles.”

“ _She_ won’t be pleased,” Crowley said and Aziraphale knew he meant Pestilence. He turned to Aziraphale. “Have you been sent to thwart me?”

Crowley had a hijab covering his hair and wrapped around his shoulders. His glasses were gone, tucked away in the pockets of his long dress, and there was a fondness in his face that exhilarated Aziraphale as much as it pleased him.

It was always something to know that another delighted in your presence, as much as you did in theirs.

“Only on a need-must basis,” Aziraphale replied, smiling. He turned towards the city slumbering beneath them so as to not get caught staring. “What _are_ you doing here?”

“Waiting,” Crowley said. “Look.”

He gestured with his hand and as if answering, Aziraphale saw stars burn just a little bit brighter. He wondered then, off handedly, what the Fall really took from Crowley that he was so powerful to inflame the heavens. He knew he was playing a fool’s game.

“Do you remember making them?”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale warned.

Principalities were created to guard, not to create. Creation was in the hands of the Almighty and her four servants. But it must have been the dark that stayed his tongue. Even his white clothes were swaddled in shadow’s embrace, ignorable compared to the expanse of the stars so far above them.

This was Crowley’s domain.

“Did you not think I didn’t hear what they’re calling you? _Israfil_.”

Aziraphale felt heat bloom on his face. “Aziraphale isn’t really forgiving on the Arabic tongue.”

The sound of the first call to prayer split the air. It was so loud that for a moment, Aziraphale could not even hear his own thoughts. Then the adhan settled, the song echoing across the houses below them and within the cavity in their chests.

One only needed to hear the call once to understand. Songs were created to praise the Almighty, and his throat had been made to please Her. Aziraphale controlled the urge to open his mouth and sing along, struggling to remain willfully ignorant. But one could not ignore being on fire for very long.

“Do you know the words to the Qur’an?”

“I was there when the words were written.” It tripped out of his mouth and spilled into the air between them, a confession. Aziraphale felt pinned.

“Do you not want to sing too?”

Aziraphale clicked his tongue, and turned his heavy brow to look at Crowley. “You’re nonsensical, my dear, and I rather think you should _stop_.”

Crowley considered him with serpentine eyes. It was not very wise of a demon to incense an angel. Alexandria had been the closest Aziraphale had ever come to revealing his true form, and it had felt the closest to God’s wrath Crowley had come in six thousand years.

But Crowley was knowledge, and unafraid, and tempted fate ever since he opened his mouth to speak up against the plan.

“And the trumpet shall be blown, so all those that are in the heavens and all those that are in the earth shall swoon, except him whom Allah will; then it shall be blown again, then they shall stand up awaiting.”

It was not magic, or incantation, or even a good rhyme. What it _was_ was burning of the wool Aziraphale had been pulling over his own eyes for as long as he had existed. Crowley was digging his thumbs in the softness of his mind, feeling at the pomegranate seeds.

“That’s what’s expected, isn't it? Of us. Israfil.”

Pain bloomed in Aziraphale’s head. Juice ran down Crowley’s hands, red seeds falling to the ground as the fruit splintered apart. Crowley had jammed the tip of a knife between glass and the lid, and there had just been a pop.

The issue with memory from so long ago was that he had sentience but only in that sort of way a wave, tides, and solar winds have sentience. He did as he was instructed and became himself over and over again as he cut and carved until he’d folded his being into his celestial body that had been splintered in two. What remained was what he was today.

But this memory wasn’t the sort that suddenly hit you at inopportune times, with awkward embarrassing recollections. This was someone pointing out a flaw, and you looking backwards and realizing just how long you’ve had it. And that imperfection, for Aziraphale, was standing next to him. His imperfection were jagged edges where, before time even started, he’d been separated in two.

His imperfection was the same being he should have smitten in the Garden, but had instead learned to adore.

“How. How long have you known?” Even to his own ears, Aziraphale sounded panicked, ill.

Something danced over Crowley’s face and Aziraphale felt ill to find it was hurt. “I have _memories_ of heaven, Aziraphale. I’ve _always_ known.”

At that moment Aziraphale realized two things: that the Almighty had separated Crowley from him and tossed him into the pit, where Aziraphale would have been duty bound to end his life; that Crowley knew this and talked with him regardless; and that now, with these facts between them, they could never go back to their easy camaraderie of before.

The Almighty _separated_ them. Not even God wanted them to be together, and here they were, standing two feet apart from one another, _talking_.

“Why would you tell me this, now?” Aziraphale asked, gripping the railings with one hand, his robes with the other.

  
  


He heard hissing. The adhan went on.

“Well. Don’t you want to do something about it?”

“Do _what_ , Crowley?” Aziraphale shouted, exasperated, hurt, and quickly coming to a realization that the friendship between them had all been a ruse for a nefarious purpose. “She separated us. She _cast_ you _down_ just so we would not be together.”

“Don’t you realize what we can be? Together?” Crowley said. “We wouldn’t have to fear heaven or hell. We could just. Be.”

“No. It’s the great plan, Crowley. It was meant to be. We obviously did something Wrong, when we were told to do Right.”

“But--”

“No. I don’t want to hear another word of it.”

Aziraphale turned to leave. He knew Crowley associated with him just for business but he thought, in his own way, that he’d liked spending his time with Aziraphale. Now he knew that had all been a lie, a ruse, to get to what he really wanted. But Aziraphale no more wanted to be Israfil again than put a hand in hellfire.

He stopped gazing down at the darkness of the circular staircase. “And I think we should not. Do this any longer. Our arrangement I mean. We should. Stay on our sides. Help out where need be, but keep to our own business.”

He waited and eventually, Crowley made a noise of agreement. Aziraphale flew down the stairs and was out of the minaret by the time the adhan was over.

Later, on the same place where the two of them stood, a man called Ibn al-Haytam would stand, look at the stars and would question how rays from his eyes could travel the large distances to celestial bodies and return to him. He would find the answer lacking. He would, in his own time, realize that light travelled in straight lines, and make his own camera obscura; it would lead to the makings of the first telescopes of the future.


	2. Then There Were Two

Here’s a quick lesson in cosmology on the topic: what happens to stars? Alpha Centauri A and B are G and K class stars. For comparison, the Sun around which the Earth revolves is G-class main-sequence star. It means it will take about 4 to 5 billion years for it to exhaust its hydrogen resources. The core will collapse and become so hot it will start fusing helium into carbon and oxygen. It will become a red giant, bloated, to almost a hundred times its original size.

One is always destined to be ahead of the other. When A becomes a red giant, B will still be a star. And when the red giant burns out into a white dwarf, the other will just be born into its own red giant shape.

### -

Ever since they’d held a sword in their hands, humans had carved out pieces of land to call it their own. Romulus and Remus, Abel and Cain, Gengis Khan and his empire.

But like all other empires and countries that would come after them, here was the universal truth: they didn’t really exist. Just like continents, like Pestilence, like Dream, they were ideas made from imagination, and, at the very core, imagination was creation. It was the greatest gift ever shared with the Almighty; something humans mastered in crafting, but that angels sorely lacked.

But creation was always bloody, painful, and unjust.

The earth trembled from thousands of galloping feet hitting it in the same tempo. It was always the easiest to spot the Emperor, even when in riding leathers, battle-tired, and surrounded by his men. Niš wasn’t built for such an army. It perplexed Manuel, Aziraphale could sense, how people he deemed barbarians could ever oppose his rule.

Manuel had not known the people of the Balkans for very long. Roughly six hundred years later Napoleon would face the same people and clutch his hat. But that would usually be the reaction of a man who was charged by a horde of giant men, used to living in the mountains, and who had, for the most of their livelihood, been fighting against the Turks. There was no elegance, and no gentlemanly conduct, when fighting for survival.

Aziraphale was getting ahead of himself. He had a job to do.

The battlements of the main fortress, where the Emperor’s thorn in the eye lay captured, were tall enough that from them Aziraphale could see when Nemanja exited the holding cell. He had no hat and no shoes. His clothes were rags, around his throat a noose, and in his hands a sword.

The first miracle: Nemanja would not try to strike the Emperor, and the Emperor would not have him beheaded.

Aziraphale snapped his fingers, and the fabric of reality shifted. Aziraphale realised he was no longer alone.

He turned to his left and found Crowley standing a few paces away, dressed in the traditional garb of the region. Somehow here, under the Blakan sky, the black took on the color of mourning and less of style.

“Funny, I just spent three days convincing him that taking Manuel’s head was not a good option.”

“Not well enough it seems,” Aziraphale replied succinctly. He was not in the mood to talk with the demon, and hadn’t been the past hundred odd years.

Crowley made a dissatisfied noise. Aziraphale turned to watch Nemanja kneel.

“I told him Manuel is not the forgiving kind.”

Aziraphale continued to look. This was shaping up to be unpleasant. Their conversations immediately after the Arrangement were strictly business. Aziraphale had not been in the mood to talk with Crowley and the old boy got the hint quickly enough. He was ignoring those signs now.

Best, Aziraphale knew, was to ignore the issue completely. Go back to party lines, ignore each other’s existence. He could not bear pretending to be Crowley’s friend now that he knew what the demon wanted. He should have known there was a point to their gatherings, the long talks, the nights spent together.

Aziraphale watched Nemanja thrust the sword into Manuel’s hands with a poet’s determination and a poet’s symbolism: _do with my life as you see fit_.

_Really though_ , Aziraphale thought, _he was an angel_. He could never afford associating with a demon for work alone anyway. Best they break it off completely.

Manuel raised the sword. He contemplated. A thousand universes were created in that moment, a thousand possibilities that played out. But in this universe, he gripped the sword and laid it in his lap.

“So you were here for him, I take it?” Aziraphale asked, relief evident in his voice.

Nemanja stood. Manuel had spared him.

“No,” Crowley said. The air carried the scent of a miracle when Nemanja was clapped in chains. His troubles were far from over.

“What did you do?”

“Don’t fret. He’s going to Constantinople to be paraded like a polar bear, and he’ll be delivered back.”

“Oh. Well.”

They had been here many times before. Azirapahle felt a tug on the hooks of his tongue that tried to shape the words: “Business concluded. Shall we have a drink?” He struggled against them and kept mum instead.

“Why is he important anyway?” Crowley asked, breaking him out of his musings.

“He’ll become a saint. Build the Orthodox Church in these parts. Very high profile.”

“Huh. He seems ordinary.”

“That’s ineffability for you.”

A beat.

“So. Would you like to have a drink with me?”

Aziraphale felt his guts twist. “Don’t. You cannot convince me to- to- _oppose_ Her.”

Crowley huffed. “This isn’t about Her, or before, or anything like that. It’s about you, right now, as you are.”

_Wretched thing_ , Aziraphale thought of his heart when it lurched at the words.

“Do you mean that, Crowley?”

“Look I know you’re not-- and that we’re not-- plus do I look like _them_ to you? No. You’re Aziraphale. And that’s who I always wanted to know.”

Aziraphale felt his resolve caving, and realized he wanted it to be that way. He wanted to believe Crowley, he wanted to go with him, despite everything, and he wanted to look at him, and listen to his stories, and allow him to promise that he would never hurt him again, even if it was a lie.

“If it’s a trick--”

“No tricks.”

His arms were open, head cocked, as if he was saying, _come here, come to me_.

“Oh. Alright then.”

The rakija, as expected, was quite good.

### -

_“Living, I despise what melancholy fate has brought us wretches in these evil years.”_

It began in England, as so many things did, with the Edict of Expulsion. It was only ten years until the turn of the century, but the sky was gloomy and forlorn. Good times had long since passed.

He was instructed to watch over the people. But protection never meant healing broken bones, feeding the hungry, mending the clothes. He had long since battled with the nature of his miracles but watching this strife, he understood, finally, how Crowley had felt when sneaking the children into the Ark.

It was said that in the end, seven angels would bear seven cups filled with God’s rage, but it felt like one of those cups had already been overturned and spilled all over Europe.

He saw Famine, two decades later, on his starving horse, giving him a grin. Pestilence was not far behind. They were keeping busy these past few centuries, almost rivaling War who had been busy brewing her Hundred Years namesake. All of the children were in one playing field.

The black death, however, weighed down on Aziraphale more than anything else that had happened. In Sodom and Gomorrah people had been turned into pillars of salt, the heavenly host descending to smite the unworthy. But this wasn’t an attack from the host. There was nothing righteous about people collapsing in the streets littered with filth, spreading disease like an ill-scented perfume. This was people choosing between caring for their family and dying of the same illness that conquered them.

Remaining unscathed was no miracle. Angels, and demons by extension, could not fall sick, mortal flesh was never an issue. But remaining well, where it once served a purpose, now felt like punishment. He was destined to be a sentinel, standing and watching, and not able to do anything.

Finding Crowley was a matter of concentrating and heading in a general direction. Many of their reunions had since been joyful, but now Crowley looked at him, pulled out a chair, and got the wine. There was nothing else to do. All of the tormenting was taken out of Crowley’s hands, and all the thwarting out of Aziraphale’s.

“Long century, this,” Crowley said, sounding a sort of defeated Aziraphale had never heard before.

“It will pass. It has to.”

“Well, duh,” Crowley replied. “Doesn’t mean thousands won’t die.”

“They’ll die anyway.”

It sounded unconvincing and Crowley finally took stock of it.

“The great plan isn’t it,” Crowley hummed into his cup. They were both sloshed. “And we’re just to stand and watch. Feels like punishment doesn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well. It’s our...fault isn’t it? Pestilence.”

Aziraphale got the itch in his lungs whenever Crowley talked about the _before_ , only now he was not alluding to _Israfil_ , and there were no songs to be sung.

Unlikes humans, who have a piece of divinity called a soul installed into mortal flesh, fallible and impermanent, the first creations had been far more sturdy. Angels, by contrast, _were_ souls. In the clay of their being, just before being fired up, She had written their purpose, and their purpose became their name once they were taken out of the oven, sturdy and immortal. When She made them, she had given them the name ‘ _god heals’_ and their name had been their purpose. But Aziraphale was no more Raphael than Crowley.

Unlike Crowley, Aziraphale didn’t remember the time of before. He remembered the feelings, he could recall the pain and recognize the truth when Crowley spoke of _them_ as one being, but the memories of Heaven in the very beginning were not there.

He had been renamed after all, his purpose altered. But the more time he spent with Crowley, the more he felt as if She had taken the fresh ceramic plate and instead of pulverizing it, making it into clay again, she just threw the plate on the floor, picked up the biggest peace, and scribbled out the name with a Sharpie pen. As if it that could ever hide what was engraved underneath.

But however badly done, she had scrapped her original work and made two smaller ones. The fact of the matter was that he _had_ been renamed. His reason for existing altered, downsized. But that was what Aziraphale was. He may not have known the grace of Israfil, Raphael, or the other names of the being he once was, but he was still an angel, and he was still himself. He wanted that to be enough.

However, he still wondered, drunk and sad, across from his companion who was in much of the same mood, if they had not rebelled, whether humanity would have still suffered Pestilence.

But that too, Aziraphale thought, was part of the plan. So he sat, and swayed, and tried to believe faith was enough.

### -

It didn’t occur to Aziraphale to ask until he was in Venice. Granted, things had picked up after he’d gotten fed up and not so much brought as he nudged humans towards China and their printing press. Good old Gutenberg delivered. Stationed in Venice, Aziraphale had been a quiet cog in the spell checking machine of book mass production since.

It seemed that, if you were going to be anywhere in Europe close to the sea, Venice was the place to be. With trade routes established with the new Ottoman Empire, which Aziraphale was keen visit if he ever could, his centuries passed, quite happily, squiring away at a table. That is, until he _felt_ it.

It was not a miracle. It was not an ethereal being. It was the sheer power of human _belief_.

It was the year 1497, on the 22nd of October. Unbeknownst to Aziraphale, Vasco Da Gama had set forth from Lisbon and had just reached Cape of Good Hope. To show thanks to his patron saint of good travels, he had just erected a column in his honor. The name of his flagship was St. Raphael, just like the angel depicted on the pillar.

“Oh good Lord,” Aziraphale said to himself, promptly deciding to ignore it henceforth.

It was not to be. Two weeks since, attending one of the latests arts expos, Venice wasn’t as artistically gifted as Florence but one had to make due, he could feel he wasn’t alone. When he turned to the left Crowley was there, dressed to perfection.

Aziraphale felt the tremors within him before the demon even spoke. And it seemed, this time, Crowley was intent on keeping quiet as they perused the exhibition.

Long since kept bottled, once forgotten, then denied since, the feelings he’d kept within his chest only for himself to gaze at, he feared, were starting to become visible. It was difficult, regardless of Cairo, not to _feel_ when Crowley was near him.

So much time he spent empathetic but distant, not living with humanity as much as living among it, brushing shoulders, but going in different directions. So when they were together, all that he _didn’t_ feel awakened, stretched, demanded attention, clawing at his throat, wanting to be voiced. And Aziraphale spent the time both marveling at those feelings, and keeping them down.

An angel’s love was a cold light, as cold as the one a white dwarf emitted. But that was not the love he felt for Crowley. The more time they spent together, the more he felt he was stealing those sensations from the demon, wrapping himself with them, a cosmic jacket against the cool winds.

Aziraphale, despite himself, knew that he would always adore Crowley and that he would always be weak for him, come Hell or high water. Now, however, that felt more like weakness than ever before.

In the sea of affluence, dressed in the reds imported from Konstantiniyee, they fit in so nobody paid them any attention.

They finally stopped in front of a painting depicting an angel. It looked nothing like angels looked nowadays and everything like the classic renaissance depiction. It certainly didn’t look like anyone Aziraphale knew but the meaning lay in the brushstrokes, in the staff that the angel carried, and in the name of the plaque.

“You felt it then,” Crowley said, going for the throat.

“I take it you did as well.”

“What does it mean?”

Aziraphale could only shrug his shoulders, though he so hated doing that. “Nothing important I think.”

Crowley didn’t even deem to give Aziraphale one of his looks.

“This is not some half-remembered life from before, angel. This is belief. _Human_ belief.”

The gravity of the situation was refusing to sink in. Aziraphale refused to acknowledge it. He knew very well what human belief did. This world was shaped by it after all. Belief stemmed from ideas that stemmed from dream, that stemmed from something important and integral and final in the human construction. If the four were created by it, then what would that mean for the two of them?

“And it will pass,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley looked at him then and handed him over a book he’d been carrying around. Aziraphale took it, curious from the start, and saw it was written in a very old script, carrying the name of a friend he’d not seen in centuries.

“What is this?”

“Human belief.”

Azirapahale flipped the book open and stood, transfixed, reading it all. Around them humans went, the lights were extinguished, the expo closed down. And still together they stood, ignored, until Aziraphale finished reading it all.

The painting was still in front of them. On the plaque it read, “ _Raphael_.”

In the darkness, Aziraphale let his shoulders sag, felt the panic in his throat, and thought very hard.

“I am not-- this is-- I am _not_ Raphael,” Aziraphale said.

“I know, angel.”

“And we-- _can’t_ , be them. Ever again.”

“I know that too,” Crowley said. And there, Aziraphale could feel a warm hand wavering to touch him.

It was unfair how easily Crowley soothed his worries.

“Crowley?”

“Yes, angel?”

“What. Why did you fall?” Silently, he asked, _Why did they become who they are? What did Raphael do?_

“I questioned the Almighty. I...we saw the plans, and we thought: why must they suffer?”

And Aziraphale realised then, he’d been asking himself the same question all this time.

Then there was a hand on his shoulder, and a worried, “Alright, angel?”

Aziraphale wished he had startled away from that hand, but it only felt as if it was taking the burden of his doubt, as if Crowley was saying with no words, _let me carry this for you_ , because he knew Aziraphale could not bear it.

Perhaps he’d been doing that this whole time.

### -

Today scientists know that the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are hurtling towards each other at 402 thousand miles per hour. In four billion years, the two galaxies will merge, drawn together by gravity.

Because the distances between the stars are so great compared to their sizes, few if any stars in either galaxy will actually collide. Any life, in that future universe will be relatively safe, if treated to a billion year light show.

### -

The first time Aziraphale got the idea that humanity might be starting to figure things out was when one rainy afternoon in 1687 he manages to acquire a brand new copy of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica written by a young man called Isaac Newton.

Now, Aziraphale had always been a fan of literary works. Human imagination amazed and horrified him in turns, and he was a being that guarded knowledge from the moment it, and he, existed. He’d kept up with the scientific method, simply to check up. But to him, until that point, advanced equations made by humans were like children’s drawings and now, for the first time, as if on a dare, young Isaac had developed another, and essential way of thinking -- calculus.

He read the book, shut it,and thought: a step in the right direction.

Those who understood could never comprehend the inescapable necessity to grasp knowledge that was just out of reach. But even if Aziraphale wanted to, he could hardly tell humans the secrets of the universe. It was written in his marrow. He could not put words to a howl, to vibrations and cosmic rays. That was for humans to do.

Quietly, he handed the book to Crowley one packed evening at the Globe London Theatre which was doing a show of Much Ado About Nothing. Crowley always prefered the funny ones.

He took it without word and it disappeared somewhere in his clothes. Aziraphale would never see the book again, but he knew it was well taken care of.

### -

Halley predicted that the Comet that was seen in 1337, 1472 and 1698, would once again visit Earth in 1758. Crowley and he had agreed to set up a telescope.

They set off to a hill outside London, Aziraphale carrying a garden basket filled with selected charcuterie and wine. By the time both were gone Halley’s comet was streaking across the sky just at the angle he predicted.

“Human’s call these falling stars,” Crowley commented. “They make wishes upon them. As if ice and rock can do miracles.”  
  


“We could do the same,” Aziraphale offered.

“We can perform our own miracles.”

Aziraphale gave him a patient look and, after a moment, Crowley softened. He was softening a lot recently, and it did not escape Aziraphale’s notice. Not much did when it came to the demon.

“Fine,” Crowley sighed. He looked up at the night sky, petulant. “We were star-stuff once.”

“We still are,” Aziraphale responded.

“But not like before.”

“Do you miss Heaven?”

“No. At least, not the place.” Crowley sat down next to Aziraphale and accepted his wine glass. “I suppose, I miss the innocence. Not knowing better. When your eyes are pried open about something, you can’t ever unsee it again.”

“What is it, then?”

“That heaven is no better than hell, only has a better view. And that God doesn’t care for innocence. And half the time we know what cards we’re dealt only after we play them.”

“My dear,” Aziraphale said, feeling as if he should reach out and pat Crowley on the shoulder.

He got a lukewarm smile and a shrug as if Crowley were saying: _I can’t help but think this_. The silence unspooled like heavy cream and the words sunk to the bottom, hidden and sweetened by their shared intimacy.

Aziraphale remembered how much more time they used to spend together before Cairo. It had always been dangerous, of course, but nobody had been looking. Then, both of them felt an invisible clockhand starting to spin, ticking down to something neither of them understood, knew or expected, and could not tell the nature of. They could only prowl around, keeping guard.

“Who did they replace us with. Upstairs.” Crowley’s voice was soft, and in that softness, Aziraphale felt unafraid.

“Replace?”  
  


“You know, we were the big four. And since you’re here-- well.”

“Oh. Sandalphon.”

“Sandalphon?” Crowley scrunched his nose, looking offended. Aziraphale felt gratified. They couldn’t have found an angel more opposite him. Or he supposed, them. Though perhaps that was the point.

“Angel?”

“Yes, Crowley?”

He looked mildly pained. “I’m just. Glad. That you’re here with me.”

Aziraphale smiled and felt hope grow feathers.

### -

Despite Crowley’s clothes which screamed proletarian peasantry, his apartment in France was far from it. Aziraphale shouldn’t have been anywhere in the vicinity of it.

The issue with the new times was that demons, after a few thousand years, got bored and started doing things like going over paperwork and checking on their operatives.

At the very start of it all, even before the world got into the four digits, they could have gotten away with anything. They usually did. Now, certain discretion was needed. Care. Crowley didn’t so much as invite him as smuggle him into the building.

Aziraphale looked around and folded himself into a pleasant armchair in the corner. He was loathe to admit it, but he felt tired from all the excitement of the day. Crowley always tired him so.

The demon, for his effort, threw away his ascot, undid the ties of his hair, and set about searching for alcohol. When in France, one always made an effort to drink wine.

Bottle found and glasses procured, Crowley said, “You shan’t worry about your return to Britain.”

“Well, how many ships are going to come hither?” Aziraphale asked, quizzically.

“One will find itself quite miraculously moored by the docks, set to sail, waiting for a _person of interest_ ,” Crowley said and didn’t hand as much as he offered Aziraphale the wine.

Aziraphale felt his cheeks warm. “Well,” he said, “Thank you very much.”

Crowley’s smile was subdued.

It was not, in retrospect, the first time they spent together in shelter. The Ark came to mind. Afterwards, they’d spent a lot of their time drinking when together, and they always ended up in one place, not sleeping, not Aziraphale, but weathering the effects of alcohol poisoning until Crowley came up with his trick. Crowley’s flat was not bourgeois in the sense of opulence but the ceilings were tall, the doors wide and sturdy. He had space, a lot of it, and sparsely filled.

Crowley curled himself around the arm of the couch nearest to the armchair and set the bottle down on the desk. The chair itself was very cushy and comfortable, though it didn’t looks so.

“Where did you get it?”

“You like? A gift from George.”

They drank until the lights outside dimmed and crowds silenced, and the only lamp lit was theirs.

“What do you think will come of all this?” Aziraphale asked, in one of his more philosophical moods.

“Same thing that came when we rebelled.”

Aziraphale frowned. “Surely not.”

“Well why do you say that?”

“They’re humans for one,” Aziraphale said. “And they’re not going against God.”

Crowley’s smirk told Aziraphale he knew little to nothing.

“They just might as well. They thought for so long their kings were God given.”

“Some _were_.”

“Exactly.” Crowley waved his hand. “Can’t really go against divinity without it biting you in the ass.”

Aziraphale liked to think so, but whenever Crowley said a determinate sentence it always made Aziraphale question in his stead. He tried to tamp it down. Then, he dismissed it. Better not question God.

“But surely they must see that their revolution is going to be...well...a revolution?”

“Don’t matter, angel. They’re fed up with living like shit,” Crowley said, sinking in his seat, very well nearly drowning in his wine glass. “The _arristos_ put plows on the people and built temples for themselves. Their hands are soaked, and have grown prunish in the blood. They do not know the meaning of poverty, fear and pain. And they still expect mercy from you?”

“Not _my_ mercy,” Aziraphale said. “I don’t think Heaven has any of that left anyway.”

“Eugh,” Crowley said, in his usual disgusted noise whenever Aziraphale mentioned Heaven. It amused Aziraphale.

The bottle was replaced with another, and kept being replaced until Aziraphale was crossing his legs, trying to blink away the cotton in his mind, and Crowley was almost sliding down the cushions, head lolling as if he were about to fall asleep at any moment.

He leaned his face against the arm and looked at Aziraphale, his glasses on the floor. He looked familiar, in that sort of way he looked in Cairo. And always, always, beautiful.

“You should rest, dear,” Aziraphale said. “You should just point me to a-- book?”

“Book, hmm, book,” Crowley said. “You ‘member Sumeria? That bard?”

“I remember that you were telling me about the Story of Gilgamesh and I did not believe you, and you brought me there, to show me. I think I will always be grateful for that.”

Crowley chuckled but his cheeks grew red, and Aziraphale couldn’t help but stand. He picked up Crowley’s glasses from the floor and folded them on the table, then sat near his belly, at the curve created for him.

Shadows played across Crowley’s face but his eyes were always incandescent, and now Aziraphale could see them at half-mast.

Still, he had enough coordination to click his fingers. He reached a hand underneath the couch and procured a book. He handed it to Aziraphale.

“Thank you, dear. Now you will sleep, and dream of whatever you like best.”

“Are you miracling me to sleep?”

“I’m all out of miracles, Crowley. This is just a wish.”

Their hands held the book, fingers almost touching. Then Crowley let go and Aziraphale stood. The demon curled up on himself and his breathing smoothed. Aziraphale read the title. He opened the book and though he started reading he kept glancing at Crowley so much he ended up capitulating, and spent the rest of the time watching him sleep.

Aziraphale didn’t. Sleep, that is. Unlike Crowley, he never got around to making the habit. But watching him like this, he slipped into a sort of trance, meditation, where he emptied himself of thoughts and filled himself with the feelings brimming in his chest, and felt peace.

They would have to part soon. But for now, Aziraphale kept the little hours grasped in his hands, but gently, softly, as if not to startle them.

### -

_“I am haunted_

_by the feeling that she is saying_

_melting lords of death, avalanches,_

_rivers and moments of passing through._

_And I am replying, "Yes, yes._

_Shoes and pudding." -jack gilbert_

### -

“Angel,” Crowley asked, “Do you ever feel tired?”

Aziraphale looked up from his book and said, “Define tired.”

In his new bookshop, with a new sign in golden letters, and finally vacated of unwanted angels that had made that morning rather surprising for all the wrong reasons, and a medal hung around the bust of Iolaus, glinting in the soft light, Aziraphale fit like a tree in a forest. To take him out of the bookshop was as unimaginable as putting Crowley in a church. Aziraphale was grateful that Crowley took action to keep him on Earth, even if it did come at the cost of melted chocolates.

Sprawled over his couch, which Aziraphale would never admit he got for the express purpose of Crowley’s comfort, Crowley, who had been relaxed only moment prior, now rubbed his hands together, radiating a sort of anxious energy just like this morning.

This was about Gabriel and Sandalphon, Aziraphale thought. He re-shelved the book, and turned to his guest.

“It’s just. London’s becoming a big city. The more people, the more _interference_.”

“We would sense them though wouldn’t we? The world is still large.”

“Who knows. There are ways...” Crowley trailed off, remembering something for himself.

“So,” Aziraphale said after a while. “What are you tired of?”

Crowley shrugged. He leaned back against the couch, slumping. “Dunno. I feel...heavy.”

Even more puzzled, Aziraphale quirked an eyebrow. To be tired, even to feel heavy, wasn’t an issue for those of angelic stock. After all, they were just energy and energy doesn’t carry mass. Their earthly bodies were just a matter of their will.

Aziraphale, in retrospect, should have listened. It was Crowley’s thoughts that were heavy.

The issue with rubbing shoulders with humanity for six thousand odd years was that, inevitably, some of their color would stick. Their hobbies: Aziraphale’s books, Crowley’s fashion, their taste for music, theatre, food, drink. In Heaven, Aziraphale couldn’t remember being happy. Not in any way that mattered. He was satisfied with a job well done, but happiness was as far from Heaven as sadness from Hell.

It was not happiness he felt when he read the words on a piece of torn paper. Baffled, angry, hurt. He shouldn’t have been able to feel that either. Even betrayed, in that sort of way only Crowley could betray him -- to leave him alone, on Earth.

He should have listened, Aziraphale thought, to what Crowley had been saying. And still, as he rushed away from the park, tasting hurt on his tongue, he wondered what he’d missed, what danger, what signs, that would have told him Crowley’s need for a suicide pill.

Aziraphale should have known he and Crowley always oscillated in perfect synchronicity but on opposite sides of the wheel. To be together, content, were all miracles, one-in-a-billion chances that they took for granted.

They’d been careful. That was always the pejorative in their meetings -- being safe. With Crowley not rousing any notice, he thought they were doing a fine job. But should the demon’s feelings be called paranoia when the danger was real?

Aziraphale wound up back at his bookshop, and he proceeded to dismiss the whole conversation. He went to the kitchenette, made himself a cup of tea, and focused on sorting books. Later, he would go to the armchair across the couch with one and he would sit and read, and he would cease to be as distraught.

Eventually, he knew, Crowley would come back. He always did.

### -

It didn’t take much to ruin the taste of a perfectly good pinot noir. Cellar it too long, but don’t chill it, bring it out to heavy warmth, or when it was opened to aerate, you accidentally let it oxidize too long. It would only take three days.

Aziraphale tasted acid on his tongue, he too left out too long. Crowley never made it to the bookshop, and Aziraphale felt as if he had missed something huge and now he couldn’t ask Crowley to tell him what it was.

Then a thought occurred to him that Crowley could have procured the holy water somewhere else. He was wily like that, and capable, and knew people. A year had already passed by the time Aziraphale forced himself to put one foot in front of another and head for the carriage which dropped him off at Crowley’s house, near the Serpentine.

Unlike the usual regency bachelor quarters, Crowley’s house was tall and narrow, in a style only able to be described as gothic. It gave off a familiar feeling that, were he a human, would have made him skip right over it and wonder from a distance when a house had popped up there while at the same time remembering that it had been there for years.

From outside, Aziraphale could see that all the windows were closed, the curtains drawn. Still, he could feel Crowley within it so it wasn’t a wasted trip. It wasn’t what he feared most.

He reached for the doors and knocked. He rang. He waited. And still, after minutes, the doors remained shut. He tried them, but they were locked.

It felt like a certain sort of finality Aziraphale wasn’t ready for. It felt as if, by refusing him, Aziraphale had shut the doors to their friendship. But he knew, despite it all, that he did the right thing. He could not give him holy water because Aziraphale could not live with himself if Crowley ever used it.

But the locked doors were a clear sign. Crowley did not want him there. So Aziraphale left.

London, thankfully, was a good distraction. When one was bored of London, one was bored of life. Aziraphale needed to be around people, and there was a nice gentleman’s club that hosted like-minded individuals.

Angels didn’t dance unless it was the celestial orbiting around the strongest point of gravity, which in Heaven would be the Almighty. Demons do. Aziraphale had seen Crowley force his legs into something more than a saunter, and so, taking a page from his book, he decided that distraction and ignoring the problem were always the best. Problems, for him, usually went away. After all, humanity remembered only so much as a century.

He joined the club and paid the hundred guineas. In turn, he never wanted for conversation partners. He could talk about Renaissance, or the Ottoman Empire, or he could talk all the way back to Acre at the drop of a hat; he could talk about greek plays, roman wars, wine, and paper stock. The other members were well-educated.

And then, as it usually went, Aziraphale lifted his head from his distractions and he found the world older, and one of his usual conversation partners at the table with him. It was the year 1885, and he was realizing that Crowley had not spoken to him in twenty years, and that perhaps he would not speak with him ever again.

The thought terrified him.

“Mr. Fell? Are you quite alright?” the man asked.

Aziraphale felt foolish and heartbroken all at once, enraged and embarrassed. So he did something only a fool like him would do: he turned to the young man and said, “Oscar, I am going to tell you something insane.”

And then he told him the whole deal: Heaven, Hell, the deal with humanity, and about God who was and wasn’t there.

The young man nodded along and did little else. By the end, he said, “I always wondered where lost souls go. But now I am afraid no longer. I will be in _good_ company.”

Five years later, Aziraphale would receive the first edition of the young man’s new book. Years after that Pestilence, as always now that Aziraphale was no longer there to curb them, would take Oscar as well.

Saddened, Aziraphale would find his way to Crowley’s house where his resident energy pulsed, and he would miracle the door open because he needed to talk with him. But instead of Crowley, even enraged, the house would be dim, dark, and dusty, doors blocked by mail. He would find his way up the stairs to the master bedroom where he’d pull the already ajar-doors open, and he would find Crowley in a bed of blankets, cocooned in darkness, asleep, hair growing out long and spilling from the sides.

There would be no letter, no matter how much Aziraphale searched, or how much he wanted there to be there. And he would remember the words _tired_ and _heavy_ and he would stand for a moment, looking at Crowley, making an image in his mind, and trying not to, but still feeling incredibly relieved to see him-- feeling as if his heart would escape his chest if he just let it.

Then Aziraphale would return to his bookshop, and decide that next time he would bring shears.

### -

His bookshop could never be characterized as welcoming. What customers he got rarely acquired what they were looking for except on incredibly rare occasions. The incessant knocking was troublesome, but when someone shouted “ _delivery_ ” he knew his exasperation was misplaced.

The man had beady eyed and glasses, and wore a shirt that said, “International Express”. The world was still recovering from the great war ten years later, but Britain, and London especially, were all too happy to hop back to their feet.

Crowley had been asleep for seventy years, and Aziraphale was just about to head for his decennial checkup.

“Mr. A. Fell?” the delivery man asked.

When Aziraphale nodded, the man handed him a clipboard and instructed, “A package for you, sir. You have to sign for it.”

“What is it?”

“I understand you weren’t informed. The parcel was supposed to go to the next-of-kin, but we couldn’t find him at home, so you’re next on the list.”

That didn’t explain anything, Aziraphale thought but he still signed and accepted the rather large and long parcel.

The man looked at it and said, “No sir, your _real_ name.” Aziraphale sighed, and over his beautiful penmanship he wrote what looked like chicken scratch, but lit up the paper, before it settled, like a brand.

The man looked at it, nodded, and thanked him.

Aziraphale brought the package into the bookshop and cleared out a little space. With a letteropener he cut through the rather insistent and mocking amount of tape.

He expected a great many things. For one, an answer to Crowley’s catatonic state, or perhaps, even his long-lost sword. But instead of a sword, inside Aziraphale found a bow, and a quiver with arrows.

Quicker than he knew to do, he dropped them back inside the package. Heart hammering in his chest, he cursed, and checked the date. 1928. He sealed up the box, and put it in his apartment upstairs, where he never ventured. Away from the eyes, away from the heart.

Only a decade later, he would realize that Pestilence had retired because a rather nifty human had developed antibiotics.

### -

Last time they had an argument, a _real_ argument, it had also been a hundred years but the stakes had been so much lower. He knew, for one, that if he wanted to, he could go and talk with Crowley at any moment.

He supposed that now, he could go and look at him at any moment too. But it wouldn’t be the same. It could never be the same as watching his animated hands express the excitement reflected in the shine of his eyes, and amusement measured in the uptick of his mouth.

Aziraphale realized, all over again, that he was insufferably, incurably ill with love, and that he had known this for centuries.

### -

The second war was, in Aziraphale’s opinion, much worse. Only one order came from the office: standby. Let humans ruin each other. This time, Aziraphale wouldn’t be looking after the people like he did during the Expulsion. This time, he couldn’t offer any help.

He sat in his shop, and then decided that if he wasn’t allowed miracles, he could do it the old-fashioned way. The _human_ way.

The first thing he did, however, was go check up on Crowley. His house, which had remained undisturbed, was still the same: curtains drawn, the door locked, and newspaper still canceled. It had been almost a hundred years and Aziraphale missed him.

If Crowley were there, Aziraphale knew, he would not stand for something like this. Not again. It may have been the great plan, but Aziraphale wasn’t going against it as much as he was trying to help, even grounded.

In front of Crowley’s front doors, Aziraphale made the decision and spent the next five years trying to worm his way into the MI6 whereupon he was not made an agent, per sé, as much as he was there to help. A good thing too -- he was one of the few who got notified in advance about the Blitz.

It would have taken a miracle for his bookshop to survive, but that was a miracle he could spend. Crowley’s house was another thing entirely.

The issue about the Fall that nobody talked about, and especially not Crowley, was the changed nature of miracles. Demons were still of angel stock, even cut off from the Almighty, but they were, in a sense, lessened. Demons, even if they wanted to, which they did not, couldn’t heal, mend, or otherwise soothe. Their miracles had explanations, even if it was a butterfly flapping its wings.

The power of the Almighty, a _true_ miracle, had no such limitations.

When he heard the church doors opening and watched as Crowley walked down the aisle, Aziraphale thought it a miracle of his own. Dressed in a sharp suit topped with a hat, and his usual glasses, Crowley looked completely different to the time Aziraphale saw him last. He looked better somehow, even with the hopping.

Or perhaps it was just Aziraphale’s relief at the sight of him. He realized, belatedly, that they’d wrapped things up on the wrong foot. He also realized that the people around him, one of which was pointing a gun at Aziraphale, all seemed demonically inclined. And Aziraphale realized this had been pre-planned all along.

But would Crowley carry a grudge for eighty odd years?

Aziraphale considered him, his hidden eyes, and thought yes, yes he would.

“What are you doing here, Crowley?”

“I didn’t want to see you embarrassed.”

“So these people are working for you?”

“No, they’re just. A bunch of half-witted nazis.”

Aziraphale was softening. He was realizing that, they were still friends.

Then, Crowley said, _a real miracle_ , and a bomb was dropping on top of their heads just before Aziraphale could question him, and could only do what he was told. Yet, they still remained standing.

“Oh, my books, I forgot all about--”

Crowley pried away the briefcase from the deathclutch of rigor-mortis and offered it to him, saying, “A little miracle of my own.”

And, Aziraphale realized just as their fingers brushed, that it was not that they were still friends but even more than that, that Crowley still remembered him. That Crowley _loved_ him. More importantly, that Crowley loved him _back_.

“Ride home?”

Aziraphale, careful of the books, walked across the street where a car had its headlights on. He got into the passenger seat and Crowley peeled off. The streets were empty, the air raid siren going off. This would not be the last of the bombs to fall on London.

Halfway to the bookshop, Aziraphale finally managed to open his mouth. “I thought you were angry with me. When you didn’t come to the bookshop.”

“Difficult to be angry with you, when I was asleep.”

“But for eighty years?”

“I had to clock out for a bit. I was tired.”

Aziraphale huffed. “And your office didn’t notice anything strange?”

“Too busy brewing this mess I assume.” The remark was snide, and probably correct.

“So when did you wake up?”

“Felt a rumbling five years ago. Couldn’t really sleep through this now could I?”

They stopped in front of the shop.

“Would you like to come in?” Aziraphale asked tentatively.

Crowley raised an eyebrow.

“Well. It’s just. It’s been such a long time, and I have to admit I missed you very much.”

“Oh,” Crowley said, cheeks reddening. “Alright. Of course.”

Aziraphale got the wine, and he spent the next few hours chatting softly with Crowley. When they got plastered, he told Crowley, “Just spend the night.” It wouldn’t be the first time, after all. Crowley didn’t protest. Funny, how it was always the times of war that made their office blind to them, and people blind to people.

Crowley kicked up his legs on the sofa and Aziraphale, later, covered him with Crowley’s usual blanket.

Then Azirphale sobered, and Crowley was still there, glasses off, hat hung up on the coat rack, slicked hair pressed into the soft sofa cushions. For a moment, everything was alright with the world.

### -

It was the inevitable truth of prolonged existence that it would eventually draw human interest in one way or another. Contained in their own century-long mortality, people gave value to old things, and in the same way permanence held attention of monoliths, so did their attention eventually stray to Aziraphale.

That is to say that, when a bookshop remained unchanged through two world wars, and the owner was quite content to help humans, feed them, and check-up on injuries, and the only rule was that you should not ever touch the books or, god forbid, buy them, the word about the aging queer gentleman got around.

Aziraphale acquired a reputation by accident, which meant that he was in the right place and time to strike a conversation with two familiar faces he’d seen a week before in a pub just in time to get them out of copper’s sight. Or he was there, in the evening, to find two, three people hiding around the bend, and he was there to see to their purpling bruises and broken wrists, and to usher them in for a tea because Crowley wasn’t around and he missed conversation.

Eventually, more people visited his bookshop in need of mending than in need of books, and while it was a chore, in that sort of way a beeping microwave was a chore because it was finished warming the food up for you, it was done soon enough. And it always carried with it the promise of coffee cupcakes.

So when Jamila, twenty and righteously angry, and Alex, broken-nosed under the heavy layer of makeup, stumbled into his shop, Aziraphale marked the passage he was reading and went to greet them.

“‘Evenin’, Mr. Fell,” said Jamila, sounding as far from angry as she could, which only told Aziraphale how very close she was to it. Some people just worked in opposites.

“Oh dear. I think you might want to sit down,” Aziraphale said, going to lock the doors, and took Alex’s muscular biceps to help ferry them to the couch.

Jamila, meanwhile, went for the counter and reached behind it to get to the first aid kit that Aziraphale never kept stocked but always had everything necessary anyway.

“Lean forward, wouldn’t want your airways clogged up,” Aziraphale instructed, procuring out of his previously empty pocket a long handkerchief soon to be soaked in blood.

Alex groaned and said, “Thanks Mr. Fell.”

“Think nothing of it,” Aziraphale replied just as Jamila sat next to Alex and popped open the first aid.

She made a noise then said, “Might want to clean off the makeup, hon.”

“There’s a bathroom down the hallway.” Aziraphale pointed to the doors. He looked down at Alex’s feet. “Ah and also if you would be more comfortable barefoot I wouldn’t mind.” The heels were quite severe.

Alex chuckled softly, in that sort of way one unused to kindness laughed when someone expressed too much of it at once, self-conscious.

“We might...have to ask you for a favor Mr. Fell,” Jamila said. “For a change of clothes for one.”

Aziraphale thought for a moment what kind of clothes to conjure up, and ended up just doing regular slacks and a shirt.

“They’re in the bathroom as well,” Aziraphale finally said.

Eventually, the heels were neatly folded under the sofa, Alex’s face was free of makeup, and Aziraphale was checking over the previously-broken nose that now only fared with a cut -- it was as much as he could do-- while Jamila was pouring them all tea. In a crisis, it seemed, it was the thing to gravitate to. Some semblance of normalcy needed to be reinstated.

“We were down by Juul’s, you know just by Dirty Donkey? Juul’s been having a tough time lately with thugs.”

“Should heal nicely,” Aziraphale told Alex, who nodded gratefully. He continued, “I know Juul’s. Has great shows, if I remember last.”

Bandages were put away, tea was handed over, and Aziraphale found himself in a chair he’d liberated from books while Jamila explained how Alex didn’t so much as start the fight as much as she ended it. The police, she said, showed up right after that and they were never on _their_ side.

“Well, they were made to protect the capital interest.”

“Saw your bloke there,” Alex said.

Jamila clicked her tongue. “Not seen him as much as seen his car really.”

“My _bloke_?” Aziraphale said.

“Yeah you know, tall, dark, skinnier than a hanger?”

“Oh, _Crowley_ ,” he said, realizing who they were talking about. He never thought to diagnose Crowley with _bloke_.

His smile dimmed when he realized that no, Soho wasn’t usually his operation ground.

“Whatever was he there for?”

Alex eyed Jamila. “Well, the Donkey is where all types hang out really--”

“And by all types, specifically, we mean criminals,” Jamila said pointedly, in that sort of way one who never judged did, and instead found it all very rather interesting.

“Or people just out of prison. Really if you want anything done, you go there.”

“Thought I mean,” she said looking around the bookshop. “Don’t know how much use you have for a bank robbery.”

And Aziraphale realised at once, it wouldn’t be a bank Crowley would be robbing but a church, the same church perhaps, in which he’d seen what he asked Aziraphale for so many years ago -- holy water. Aziraphale’s tentative smile dropped into subzero.

Jamila gave Alex a worried look, one that meant, “Told you not to say anything.”

They never knew what kind of place people were in after all, and really plausible deniability got more than one of them out of jail. Alex shrugged. She’d been in a fight once already, and the adrenaline was wearing off, and she was getting sleepy.

“He’s going to get himself killed,” Aziraphale said, mouth pressed into a fine line, just like the one that separated his patient worry from righteous anger-- a tightrope.

“This may not be any of my business but...can’t you just...lend him some money, don’t you think?”

“He ought to give it back if it’s you, is all.”

Aziraphale thought for a moment really hard. Then, defeated, he asked, “Is he still there you suppose?”

“Probably,” Alex said, which was enough for Aziraphale to get up.

“Uh,” Jamila said, suddenly wanting to be anywhere else. “We’ll get out of your hair, ye?”

“Nonsense, dear, I’m just going to pop out for a _chat_.”

Then, Aziraphale headed for the kitchen. He took out his thermos, filled it with water from the tap, and sighed a blessing. It shone, and then it was just the same water form before. In a blink, Aziraphale found himself in Soho, sitting in the Bentley, and Crowley was there, looking regrettably dashing. If years had taught Aziraphale anything, it was that heartbreak always came with a familiar face.

“Let me give you a ride,” Crowley said, but there were layers to his words, just like there were layers to the thermos, the tartan print on it, the wish and hope that it might just remind Crowley of him before he decided to douse himself with it.

For the first time Aziraphale understood the layers beneath all Crowley’s words because, for the first time, they were finally on the same page. They had been on the same page the past twenty years.

Let me give you a ride meant _come with me_ , and it meant, _leave everything else behind_ , and it meant turning his back to the above, and to his rules, and everything else he believed in. And the terrifying reality of it was that Aziraphale wanted to. It wasn’t difficult to imagine it.

But Crowley had had six millenia to get used to disbelieving in Heaven and Aziraphale was not yet ready to take that plunge.

“You go too fast for me, Crowley,” he said, and he watched Crowley’s face fall, and watched realization dawn between the lines of his brows. They were on the same page, true, but Aziraphale was reading much slower than Crowley.

He said, “Maybe, one day, we can have a picnic. Dine at the Ritz.” but Aziraphale meant, “I know you love me. I love you as well. But I can’t rebel. I can’t go against heaven like you do. I am not ready. But I hope, one day, I will be, and I hope that day you’ll still be here. This is not a stop. This is a pause. A rain check. Please be there for when I want to cash it in.”

After, he stood by the curb watching Crowley drive off alone, wishing he’d gone with him regardless.

### -

1976

Aziraphale fretted about it later, when he’d gone back to the bookshop and Alex and Jamila had taken one look at him and decided they ought to leave him to deal with it in private.

He should have counted on Crowley remaining loyal to himself.

Where Aziraphale thought their meetings would thin out even more, shorten, the distance grow, Crowley did the very opposite. There was an occasional phone call, a wrapped first edition on his doorstep, business true at first, but always followed up with a nice meal, good wine, and his company.

So when Crowley called Aziraphale up and opened with -- “Mind doing a temptation while you’re in Edinburgh next week?”-- it wasn’t anything out of the usual. Nothing except that, when Aziraphale actually finished up the business and decides to attend the Festival while he was in town, Crowley seemed to be there.

“I thought you were busy down south?” Aziraphale told him, not unhappy to see him. He was still in his round-glasses-and-turtleneck type of fashion.

“I was. Now come on or we’ll miss it.”

For the first time since the turn of the century, Crowley did not have his Bentley with him.

“This year’s actors are quite good. Heard this Rickman fellow is quite good.”

“You’ll have time to indulge Alan,” Crowley sniffed. “This is a one of a lifetime moment.”

Crowley took the lead and the corner of Aziraphale sleeve. They passed innumerable doors, security, people, and somehow, ended up in a crowd of people listening closely to a man on stage talking to them. Aziraphale took note of the instruments, the other men on stage and concluded they were at a concert. Or, at least, what was left of it.

He heard Crowley’s excited little sigh. “We’re just in time.”

“What are we doing _here_?”

“Shh. This song won’t be available until next _year_.”

On the stage, the man said, "We're now gonna do a song, which is a new one from our forthcoming album. Have you got it yet?"

He had long hair and a getup that characterized him as a rockstar.

The crowd, mesmerized, laughed and replied with a resounding, “No.”

The man said, "This is a little ditty called You Take My Breath Away."

He sat at the stage piano and started playing a soulful, if grim, ballad. Aziraphale noticed the audience growing serious, and Crowley next to him, straightening his shoulders as if preparing for a blow.

“ _Look into my eyes and you’ll see I’m the only one,_ ” the young man started crooning, and Aziraphale was transfixed. It was a human throat, a human voice, but it was as if the man’s very soul was singing.

_“You've captured my love, stolen my heart, changed my life._

_Every time you make a move you destroy my mind, and the way you touch I lose control and shiver deep inside._

_You take my breath away._ ”

Aziraphale felt his cheeks flush. He was made of love, he had been collecting novels long enough to know it is the main topic of human brilliance, and he still got a little tingle in his cheeks, smiling, just like with a good Jane Austen.

“ _You can reduce me to tears with a single sigh._ ”

Aziraphale felt the bodies moving around them, and sensed the love in the place, growing, swelling. The people suddenly had tears in their eyes and didn’t know why.

“ _Every breath that you take, any sound that you make, is a whisper in my ear._

_“I could give up all my life, for just one kiss I would surely die If you dismiss me from your love. You take my breath away.”_

Aziraphale glanced at Crowley and couldn’t help but admire his beautiful, sharp profile. The bodies around them moved, pushing and undulating, reacting to the music. In the sea, Crowley stood, an unmoving obelisk.

And then, just as the young man started another verse, Crowley turned to look at him. Suddenly, the words were no longer from the young man on stage but all that was unspoken between them, as if Crowley was using the young man’s voice to convey the unspoken.

_“So please don't go, don't leave me here all by myself, I get ever so lonely from time to time. I will find you anywhere you go, I'll be right behind you right until the ends of the Earth. I'll get no sleep till I find you, to tell you when I've found you - I love you.”_

People erupted in cheer around them. Some whistled, others shouted. But Aziraphale could only look at Crowley and his darkened glasses, and felt as if his chest might collapse in on itself.

“Aziraphale I am. Who I am. And I know what you said, but I cannot dim myself any more than you can dim yourself for safe consumption. There is only one truth in my world, and that is that I want to be with you, on this Earth, in perpetuity.”

When Aziraphale didn’t answer Crowley smiled, a little sharp, and a little broken, and said, “We can leave now, angel.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphael said, and took him by the cuff of his blazer, stopping him in his tracks. “You shouldn’t. Dim yourself I mean. I always could look at you with both eyes open.”

Crowley looked at him for a long time. Then he finally turned his face away, and said, “Come, angel.”

### -

September 5th, 1977

The command room was tense. The launch vehicle was just being centered. Unlike in 1961 and later, with 1969, the flying vessels were not manned except by the computers that were going over the protocols. The project had been in the works for the past ten years, and it was time to let the bird out of its nest.

Due to safety reasons, whenever a rocket was launched into space, the public was allowed to view it only from 3.9 miles away. The press, on the other hand, were allowed a mere 2 miles distance -- but the tradeoff was the deafening noise that necessitates hearing protection.

It was why nobody stopped to check if there were any more people around; nobody expected people to be anywhere near the launching pad. And they would be right. Two people, humans at least, weren’t there -- but an angel and a demon were.

They had a tartan blanket they were sitting on and a basket between them. Two short champagne glasses leftover from the 20s stood by the basket while they were plucking from a spread of cheese, meats, fruits, and nuts. Both had noise protection earmuffs, which they didn’t need, and they could still hear each other over them.

The countdown started. The noise got worse, heat waves stronger. Launching a rocket into space was, after all, just a matter of a controlled explosion pointed at the right end.

It started lifting, the red tail of fire and fuel curling around the pavement, and them it was gone at the stroke of zero, launched into the heavens. The champagne cork popped clean off, and the golden liquid poured generously into the glasses.

“They’re really starting to get it aren’t they?” the demon asked.

“I would think they were getting it in ‘61?”

The demon waved his hand away. “That was just a measuring contest. This is something else. They’re doing it to _learn_ . They’re starting to _understand_.”

The angel hummed for a moment, and said, “They are, aren’t they?”

### -

How do you split the night sky in equal parts? How do you hand out the qualities of one being to two? Who gets what? How do you decide?

Not even the Almighty can wield a knife and call it justice. The numbers could never be even but perhaps even numbers have never been the point.

In his opinion, dividing the nebulae only makes one into two identical things. Like cell reproduction. Eventually, under the duress of dark energy, they will expand into their original form, regardless of anyone’s wishes.

Later, he will call it the splintering. It sounds just as messy as the whole Falling ordeal had been. Splintering implies the lack of clean lines, and a whole lot of woodchips lodged in fingertips. It is uneven, impossibly painful, unwanted: the wood never gives way to the axe willingly.

But perhaps division issn’t the point. Maybe the Almighty has a different idea.

### -

1985

Now, there is one thing to clear up when it comes to the whole horn business. Gabriel is not the only angel to have a horn. In fact, every angel who has their own battalion, starting with the archangels, lowercase a, has a type of horn. Of course, they all sound different. It wouldn’t do for things to get mixed up. The four capital A Archangels also have horns. Israfil’s, it is said, is always poised to their lips ready to blow. Of course, that is no longer true. Israfil’s horn is stored in heaven, in the “lost and found” section, alongside a pair of outdated glasses. It is accompanied by a bow and a crown but they will later be nicked while Michael is looking away.

If Israfil, or the two beings that once constituted them, is ever to have a horn again it will be that which is in their throats.

### -

The arena was filled with so many people it was near to bursting. Girls were climbing on and off men’s shoulders, hands and elbows were getting into awkward places, and at a certain point neck kinks from looking up at the stage were inevitable.

In the sea of bodies that swayed to the music like seaweed in underwater currents, stood two still points. They had gotten through with a personnel pass before disappearing into the crowd that parted for them yet remained ignorant of their presence.

With the exception of that live concert, Aziraphale had never listened to Queen, and he was about to experience their most famous performance.

The crowd cheered when the band was announced and the members ran out. Aziraphale though, noticed Crowley moving shiftily and when he looked up at him, Crowley smirked.

“Shall we be naughty for a bit?” he asked.

There wasn’t enough space for him to raise an arm to snap his fingers, but Aziraphale felt the power of a miracle all the same. Before Aziraphale could ask what he did, the crowd surged and his eyes ferried from Crowley to the stage where the music started with a familiar intro.

It may be important to point out in this moment that the angel Israfil was also the patron of music and while Crowley indulged in that itch, Aziraphale was letting himself feel it for the first time.

Aziraphale recognized the same young man from twenty years ago, and when he started singing it felt like letting off fireworks in a field of fireflies. Attention stolen, occupied, he let himself breathe in the songs that coursed over them, the tidelord directing the waves, and people sang and screamed along.

Aziraphale’s lungs ached, begging him to sing along. He looked up at Crowley, who had a finely controlled expression on his face.

The TV broadcast would show only twenty minutes allocated to the band but time is impermanent and always capable of being displaced by those of higher power. When the official live concert went out, all the TV transmitters went out, and suddenly only the twenty thousand eyes and ears were privileged to the next song.

“And now,” the young man said, “the last song. Dedicated to a good friend who might be among you.”

Aziraphale’s breath grew deeper, and he knew, suddenly every word to be spoken. He had composed every song that ever was and ever will be. He knew.

The guitarist started a slow melody and Freddy followed along with, “ _Love of my life, you’ve hurt me. You’ve broken my heart and now you leave me._ ”

Crowley was suddenly close, the two of them shoulder to shoulder, nose to nose, and he knew at once that what he was feeling, Crowley was feeling as well. Finally, Aziraphale decided to take Crowley’s hand.

The two of them each took a breath, and then--

“ _Love of my life can’t you see--_ ”

Israfil has not sung for six thousand years. He was supposed to sing praises to God. But after four thousand years, together, the beings called Israfil did not sing for God or for heaven, but for a man called Freddy Mercury.

Aziraphale held Crowley’s hand all throughout, and once they were finished singing, and the crowd cheered and followed the band off the stage, Aziraphale said, “How do you feel about dinner?”

“Wherever you want to go, angel.”

“Well,” Azirahale said, bashful. “How do you feel about the Ritz?”

### -

Time to revisit a lesson. Armageddon is a single-point event, just like the school dance, and right now all those dancing pairs are putting on their suits and dresses, and getting into their parent’s cars so they aren’t late.

Heaven and Hell’s armies are ready. And on the side, wishing they were anywhere but where they, are Crowley and Aziraphale, who already had their dance a long time ago.

-

It was a matter of counting measures. In a waltz, you counted the three-quarter measure, put one foot here, the other there, and spun. It had become par for the course in their relationship. Crowley talked about business, Aziraphale refused until he remembered that this was the one way to get Crowley to socialize, and then they went to get sloshed. That hadn’t changed for centuries, it had only become a farce. A farce that he now used as an excuse.

Crowley gave him a finger, and a hand, and just when Aziraphale thought that there might be more to it, the L shaped word hanging between them, he pulled away.

Being the one to break the habit was unspeakably difficult.

“It’s over,” he said, and regretted it the moment it left his mouth. It hurt him as much as it hurt Crowley who gave him a look, the same look from the Ark.

The issue that had always been with them, was that Aziraphale had always stuck to party lines. It was a ridiculous idea, after such a long time. He knew dragging it up as a reason for denying Crowley’s feelings, their friendship, was nonsensical. But there was panic brewing in his heart, and an itch in his lungs, and he felt he should be holding a sword right about now. To admit that heaven was in the wrong would mean everything he had believed in would come down around his ears and he could not bear it.

And then Crowley came back. Crowley always came back. He said, “I’m sorry angel, get in the car.” and he said, “Alpha Centauri, nobody will spot us there.” And Aziraphale still didn’t go.

He realized, watching the Bentley leave, that he would never again see Crowley. However, the fact only hit home after his talk with the Metatron and he realized that no, heaven never really cared and God was absent, and would watch this play out like She had watched everything play out so far.

He realizes he should have just gone with Crowley. But then he’s in heaven, disappointed and saddened, and holding all back because if _they_ won’t stop the Armageddon, only he and Crowley can.

He really detested the decor. Not even Crowley’s apartment in Mayfair on the Serpentine could connote the feel of Heaven, though it got bloody close. Still, there was an abusive sergeant he remembered, his regiment all prepared for war, and Aziraphale was having none of it.

He thought, distantly, that he misplaced his bow and arrow. And then he knew he could not be blowing any horns any time soon if he wished to stop what was coming.

When he traversed down to earth he could not see anything without a corporation, but he could sense Crowley, and that was where he went first.

“I lost my best friend,” Crowley said, voice cracking.

Aziraphale wished he could linger on that, comb out the hoarseness in Crowley’s voice, soothe the ache he can’t help but feel, but there was little time.

“Where are you,” Crowley said, “I’ll come get you.”

And it was the same dance, the same rhythm as before, as it always had been even though the song had changed. He explained, as much as he could about the prophecy, Tadfield, being discorporated. The problem now was finding a receptive body.

“Pity I can’t inhabit yours,” Aziraphale said. And at once he knew he’d walked right into quicksand.

“You could, if you wanted to,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale felt his face crumbling. “I know I just-- I’m afraid Crowley. Of what might happen to us. I don’t want to stop existing this way. I don’t want all my memories and experiences to be wiped out.”

Crowley didn’t advocate. It was a good argument: Aziraphale already lost one set of memories once.

When Aziraphale actually saw Crowley again, the Bentley was on fire and they were having an issue with one of War’s little emissaries. Crowley had a book in his hand and a quiver and a bow slung over his shoulder, and Aziraphale felt such a deep ache for him he could sense Madame Tracy’s corporation shaking.

“Oh so it’s like that,” Madame Trady thought, which felt to Aziraphale as if someone was whispering in his ear.

And then there were no whispers left. In front of Adam Young he was in his own corporation again. He and Crowley watched from the sidelines, as it so often happened, as it _always_ happened, while the children dealt with the horsemen. Death finally flapped his wings to leave and Aziraphale recognized them from a very long time ago, at the beginning of it all. Death’s wings were, after all, one of a kind.

“Nothing’s over yet,” Crowley said.

While he was talking with Adam, Aziraphale looked at the sword, scales, and the crown on the pavement and thought, “Didn’t we used to have a crown?”

He crossed the tarmac and bent to pick it up. It was silver all over again now that Pollution’s effect was gone. Before he could think too much of it, he heard the thunder crackle, and the ground rumble as it split to accommodate Gabriel’s and Beelzebub’s corporation.

At once Crowley looked at him, and he opened his arms and said, “Come.”

It had been six thousand years in the making. Aziraphale felt his spirit vibrating as he jogged over to Crowley. He stumbled, Crowley caught him, and suddenly he was in Crowley’s arms, wrapped, protected, felt. Loved. Who left their corporation first, Aziraphale didn’t know, only that demonic bodies weren’t meant to bear the weight of two celestial beings in it, and neither were angelic ones. But form, as always, has only ever been an issue of will and Raphael’s, and in turn Crowley’s, best gift had always been imagination. So Crowley imagined they were together, and they were. It was a contained explosion. Their essences slid against one another before passing through, merging.

Galaxies, remember?

All that was Crowley was at once all that was Aziraphale: likes, thoughts, memories. There wasn’t one corner left not overturned, overlooked, unknown, in the joyous celebration.

The bodies were burnt away as CrowleyandAziraphale orbited around each other, two celestial orbs with six wings, four heads, innumerable hands, radiating energy and light. The onlookers couldn’t decide if they were six or sixty feet tall, since they shone so bright. All they knew was that there was a bow and an arrow in one pair of hands, a flaming sword in another, and a crown spinning above the four heads.

You can imagine what it was like for four eleven-year-olds, two aging pensioners, a hellhound and one very old friend, to gaze upon Raphael. Probably the reason why all angels have said, “Do not be afraid.” No matter how lovely described, angels have always been occult, monstrous, and unhuman. Angels were a soul. They were wrath as much as pity.

Beelzebub and Gabriel halted. Though the humans couldn’t feel it, the two celestial beings felt the waves of power, the explosive energy of Crowley and Aziraphale’s joining. They felt they were in front of one very angry Archangel.

“What in Hell’s name is this?” Beelzebub demanded of Gabriel who, in turn, looked slightly sickly. He’d been on Armageddon duty too long not to recognize the being in front of him.

“It’s Raphael,” he said, “Only very angry and without a body. And with his crown and quiver.”

Beelzebub turned to look at the being in front of them and realized, with the same feeling one realized they’re in front of a loaded gun with the safety off, that they could be smitten at any moment.

Unbeknownst to Beelzebub, however, Gabriel was feeling quite the same thing. Still, he had a duty, and he’d been working too hard on this to stop now.

“You can’t protect them,” Gabriel shouted. “They’re doomed. It’s written. It’s the plan.”

Raphael, or the blind heads and thousand-eyed wings and mum mouth that spoke regardless, said, “Gabriel. It has been a long time.”

And Gabriel at once knew that it was true, and that the being in front of him really was Raphael with all of Raphael’s memories, and he cringed.

“You were there when I fell, Gabriel,” the being said. “You laughed at me.”

The crown, that really was a wheel, started spinning quicker, the fire contained in it burning brighter.

“You have forgotten we were made to serve them, Gabriel.”

“No, _no_ , we were made to serve the Almighty, and _her_ great plan.” Gabriel replied.

“Wouldn’t that be the ineffable plan?” said the voice, which now sounded more like Aziraphale.

“The great plan!” Beelzebub shouted. “The world shall exist for six thousand years, and then it shall perish.”

“But wouldn’t that also be the ineffable plan? What if you’re going against God’s plan right now and you wouldn’t know it?”

Gabriel turned to Beelzebub, and for a minute they talked. Then they turned to Raphael and said, “You’ll carry the blame for this.”

“My horn is still in Heaven, Gabriel. The end times were never meant to be.”

Gabriel frowned for the first time in millenia.

“Young man,” he turned to Adam, “I hope someone tells your father.”

“Oh they will,” Beelzebub promised, and then both of them were gone.

Raphael turned towards the children. It did not feel as Aziraphale thought it would. Unlike with Madame Tracy, it felt as if he knew every movement, every thought, every feeling. Now he knew all that he didn’t before: he could see through Crowley’s eyes all that was and all that is, and all he was feeling.

Just before they could rejoice, the earth started to tremble, and anger was pouring into the air like condensation waiting for a storm.

Aziraphale thought, “Do something, Crowley, or I will never talk with you again.”

And Raphael closed all of their eyes and said, “Enough already.” The boy, they think, and they look at Adam. Their large hand swept at him and--

Adam wasn’t so much on Earth as he suddenly found himself within the celestial energies of Raphael. He floated in the expanse of the nebulae that had remained them, and he could see the spinning rings with golden eyes, and the two stars orbiting each other, and he saw the beginning and the end of Raphael, and he knew everything that the two of them were.

“Your demonic father is coming,” Raphael said, “You have to do something about it.”

“But what could I do. I’m just a kid.”

“That’s right. You’re _human_ incarnate, Adam. Not of heaven or of hell. And that means you have free will. Free will to _choose_ what will happen.”

Adam nodded, realizing. And then he crooked an eyebrow and asked, “But why do you keep insisting to be one person?”

“Well-- we _are_ Raphael.”

However to Adam’s eyes it didn’t look like one person, the entity before him, but like two people held in a very tight embrace.

“You _were_ Raphael,” Adam said. “But now there’s two of you, and you both have grown into something else. Something stronger.”

Simply put, where Aziraphale and Crowley thought they were doing addition, they were instead doing multiplication.

Like magic words breaking a spell, Raphael fractured in a flash of golden light and blue eyes, and suddenly, standing there, were Crowley and Aziraphale, hands held tightly together.

One could not slice two nebulae and not hope they grow, and Crowley and Aziraphael had grown into their shoes, and became what they were before. An Archangel. _The_ Archangel. The protector of humanity.

Finally, Aziraphale picked up his sword before taking Crowley’s hand again. Now, Aziraphale knew Crowley loved him, and Crowley knew he was loved back, and they both knew that whatever happened, whether they perished there in front of Satan, or they lived through, they would be doing it together, and there would be no more caution, no more tentativeness, no more waiting to do what they wanted to do all these years -- be together without fear of repercussion, blatant and proud, and glorious.

-

Somewhere above, God hands the two of them their chips, and they go to cash in their prize. The two unpaired matter particles climb into their Bentley and drive home with their winnings. Then God collects everybody’s cards, reshuffles them, and deals them all over again. The game is still on.


End file.
